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The  Great  Lakes 

The  Vessels  That  Plough  Them:  Their  Owners, 
Their  Sailors,  and  Their  Cargoes 


Together  with 

A  Brief  History  of  Our  Inland  Seas 
By 

James  Oliver  Curwood 


With  72  IHustratiom  and  a  Map 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New   York   and   London 

TLbc   IRnicI^erbocfter  press 

1909 


Copyright,  igog 

BY 

JAMES  OLIVER  CURWOOD 


TTbe  ftnfcfierbocfier  t>tcM,  tHc\o  VorR 


TO  HIS 

FATHER  AND  MOTHER 

WHOSE   ENCOURAGEMENT  AND  FAITH  IN  HIM  HAVE  BEEN  UNFAILING, 

THE  AUTHOR 

AFFECTIONATELY  DEDICATES  THIS  BOOK 


1.900^^1 


Prefa 


ce 


IN  this  volume,  it  has  been  my  object  to  tell  of  the 
people  and  of  the  picturesque  life  of  the  Great 
Lakes,  and  to  set  before  my  readers  actual  facts 
about  the  cities,  the  commerce,  and  the  future 
of  the  greatest  fresh-water  seas  in  the  world.  For 
some  unaccountable  reason,  the  Great  Lakes,  not- 
withstanding the  fact  that  more  than  thirty  million 
people  live  in  the  States  bordering  their  shores,  and 
in  spite  of  the  still  more  remarkable  fact  that  they 
are  doing  more  than  anything  else  on  the  American 
continent  for  the  commercial  progress  of  the  nation, 
have  been  almost  entirely  neglected  by  writers.  To- 
day there  are  but  few  people  who  know  that  one  of 
the  three  greatest  ports  and  the  largest  fleet  of  freight- 
ers in  the  world  are  on  these  unsalted  waters;  and  I 
mention  the  fact  in  this  particular  place  simply  to 
bring  home  to  the  casual  reader  how  little  is  known 
by  the  public  at  large  about  our  Inland  Seas.  For 
this  reason,  I  have  not  dealt  with  any  single  side  of 
Lake  life,  but  have  attempted  to  present  as  many 
phases  of  it  as  I  could;  and,  for  the  same  reason,  I 
have  added  a  brief  historical  account  of  the  Lakes  at 


VI 


Preface 


the  end  of  the  book.  It  has  been  my  desire,  too,  that 
these  pages,  from  the  beginning,  should  prove  of 
especial  value  to  those  many  thousands  all  over  the 
world  who  are,  or  may  in  the  future  be,  directly  in- 
terested in  the  Lakes  in  a  business  way;  and  a  great 
deal  of  attention  has,  therefore,  been  given  to  the 
commercial  side  of  my  subject — statistics  and  facts 
regarding  Lake  commerce,  the  opportunities  of  the 
present  day,  and  a  forecast  of  what  the  coming  years 
hold  in  store  for  the  men  who  have  investments,  or 
who  plan  to  invest  in  business  enterprises,  on  or 
about  the  Great  Lakes. 

While  dwelling  upon  the  importance  of  the  com- 
mercial life  of  the  Inland  Seas,  I  wish  also  to  empha- 
sise the  fact  that  I  have  kept  always  in  mind  another 
large  class  of  people  who  are  keenly  interested  in 
my  subject,  though  not  from  a  commercial  stand- 
point. The  present  volume  is  designed  to  interest 
this  latter  class  by  portraying  another  side  of  Lake 
life — ^the  human  side,  the  romance  and  the  tragedy 
that  have  played  their  thrilling  parts  upon  these 
waters;  the  wonders  of  their  progress;  the  story  of 
their  ships,  their  men,  their  wars,  for  of  all  the  pages 
in  the  history  of  the  North  American  continent  none 
are  more  thrilling,  or  more  filled  with  the  romantic 
and  the  picturesque,  than  those  which  tell  the  story 
of  our  fresh-water  seas. 

In  conclusion,  I  wish  to  say  that  I  owe  a  great  debt 
of  gratitude  to  the  scores  of  Lake  "owners,"  ship- 


Preface  vii 

builders,  and  captains  who  have  aided  me,  in  every 

way  possible,  in  the  preparation  of  this  volume,  and 

without  whose  personal  co-operation  the  writing  of 

it  would  have  been  impossible. 

J.  O.  C. 

Detroit,  Michigan,  1909. 


Contents 

PAOB 

PART  I 

THE  SHIPS,  THEIR  OWNERS,  THEIR  SAILORS, 

AND  THEIR  CARGOES 

I — ^The  Building  of  the  Ships     ....       3 

II — What  the  Ships  Carry — Ore  .         .         .25 

III — What  the  Ships  Carry — Other  Cargoes  .     46 

IV — Passenger  Traffic  and  Summer  Life      .         .     68 

V — ^The  Romance  and  Tragedy  of  the  Inland  Seas    89 

VI — Buffalo  and  Duluth:  the  Alpha  and  Omega 

OF  THE  Lakes       .         .         -113 

VII — ^A  Trip  on  a  Great  Lakes  Freighter       .         -137 

PART  II 
ORIGIN  AND  HISTORY  OF  THE  LAKES 

I — Origin  and  Early  History     .         .         .         -159 

II — ^The  Lakes  Change  Masters  .         .         .         .175 

III — ^The  War  of  181 2  and  After  .         .         .         .194 

Index    ........   223 


Illustrations 

Page 
The  Fountain  of  the  Great  Lakes      .      Frontispiece 

Lorado  Taft,  Sculptor. 

The  First  Step  in  the  Making  of  a  Ship — Laying  the 

" Keel  Blocks'' 4 

Second  Step — Laying  the  Keel,  or  Bottom  of  the  Ship, 

on  the ''Keel  Blocks"  .  .  .  .       6 

The  Growing  Ship      ......       8 

Vessel  Almost  Ready  for  Launching      .  .  .10 

A  Monster  of  Steel  and  Iron  Ready  to  be  Launched  .     12 

Weight  g, 500,000  lbs. 

The  Launching  .  .  .  .  .  -14 

The  "  Thomas  F.  Cole,"  11,200  Tons,  Being  Fitted 

with  Engines  and  Boilers  after  her  Launching.       16 

The  ''Cole"  is  the  largest  ship  on  the  Lakes.     Length, 
605  feet  5  inches. 

Her  First  Trip — Off  for  the  Ore  Regions  of  the  North     18 

This  Shows  Some  of  the  800,000  Rivets  that  Go  to 
the  Making  of  a  10,000-Ton  Leviathan  of  the 
Inland  Seas         .  .  .  .  .  .22 

Ice-Bound.      Thirty-two  Boats  Tied  up  in  the  Ice 

at  the  Soo  ,  .26 

From  a  Photograph  by  Lord  &   Thomas,  Sault  Ste. 
Marie,  Mich. 


xii  Illustrations 

Page 
A  Network  of  Tracks  Running  through  the  Ore  Lands     28 

Captains  of  the  Vessels  of  the  American  Steamship 

Company  .  .  .  .  .  .  •     30 

The  "Montezuma"     .  .  .  .  .  -32 

The  largest  wooden  ship  on  fresh  water  being  towed  out 
of  the  Maumee  River,  Toledo. 

A  Coal  Dock  at  Superior,  Wisconsin     .  .  -34 

The  pile  of  coal  is  1400  feet  long  and  jo  feet  high. 

The  Record  Load  Hauled  by  One  Team  out  of  the 

Michigan  Woods,  20,000  Feet        .  .  -36 

One  Steam.  Shovel  Keeps   Three  Locomotives  and 

Trains  Busy       .  .  .  .  .  -38 

Steamers   at   a   Modern   Ore    Unloading   Plant   at 

Conneaut   .  .  .  .  .  .  .40 

The  Main  Slip  in  the  Harbour  of  Conneaut     .  .     42 

Conneaut  is  the  second  largest  ore-receiving  port  on  the 
Lakes. 

One  of  the  Huge  Open  Pits  of  the  Mesaba  Range     .     44 

A  Raft  of  Five  Million  Pulp  Logs  on  the  North  Shore 

of  Lake  Michigan         .  .  .  .  .48 

Scooping  up  Ore  from  the  Mahoning  Mine  at  Hibbing    52 

The  largest  open  pit  mine  in  the  world. 

A  Mining  Town  on  the  Mesaba  Range,  where  a  Few 
Years  ago  the  Deer  and  Bear  Roamed  Undis- 
turbed        .         .  .         .         .         .  -54 

Harbour  View  at  Conneaut,  Ohio,  Showing  Docks 

and  Machinery   .  .  .  .  .  -56 

A  Steam  Shovel  at  Work     .  .  .  .  -     5S 

This  removes  from,  4000  to  8000  tons  of  ore  a  day. 


Illustrations  xiii 

Page 
The  Old  and  the  New  .         .         .         .         .62 

A  modern  freight  carrier  passing  one  of  the  old  schooners. 

A  Shaft  on  One  of  the  Ranges      .         .         .         .66 
The ''North  West'' 68 

One  of  the  finest  passenger  steamers  on  the  Great  Lakes. 

The  Stop  at  Tashinoo  Park,  St.  Clair  Flats     .  .     70 

The  Landing  at  Mackinac  Dock,  Michigan    .  .     72 

Hickory  Island  at  the  Mouth  of  Detroit  River  .     74 

From  a  Photograph  by  Manning  Studio,  Detroit. 

The  ''City  of  Erie'' y6 

The  fastest  steamer  on  the  Lakes,  holding  a  record  of  22. gj 
miles  per  hour. 

Little  Venice,  St.  Clair  River        .  .  .  .80 

Showing  the  type  of  "Inns,"  where  people  may  pass  their 
holidays  at  small  expense. 
Courtesy  of  Northern  Steamship  Co. 

A  Scene  on  Belle  Isle,  Detroit  River       .  .  .82 

Steamer ''Western  States"  .  .  .  .84 

One  of  the  largest  and  fastest  boats  on  the  Lakes.  Carries 
2^00  people  and  her  fastest  speed  is  20  miles  an  hour. 
From  a  Photograph  by  Detroit  Photographic  Co. 

Steamship  "North  West"  in  American  Lock  .     86 

Cottages  Built  at  Small  Expense  along  the  St.  Mary's 

River 88 


90 


A   Steamer  Stripped  by  a   Tow-line  by  Running 
between  a  Steamer  and  her  Consort 

From  a  Photograph  by  Lord  &  Rhoades,  Sault  Ste. 
Marie,  Mich. 

A  Remarkable  Photograph  Showing  the  Big  Freighter 

" Stimson"  in  a  Holocaust  of  Smoke  and  Flame   p4 


xiv  Illustrations 

Page 
After   a  Fierce  Night's    ''Late  Navigation''    Run 

across  Lake  Superior    .  .  .  .  .     g6 

A  Ship  that  Made  the  Shore  before  she  Sank.     The 

Work  of  Raising  her  in  Progress    .  .  .100 

A  Treacherous  Sea  in  its  Garb  of  Greatest  Beauty    .   102 

One  phase  of  Lake  navigation. 

A  View  of  the  ''Zimmerman''      .  .  .  .104 

After  a  collision  with  another  freighter. 

The  Steamer  "Wahcondah"       ....      108 

One  of  the  Lake  grain  carriers  which  was  caught  in 
a  storm  late  in  the  season  after  being  buffeted  by  the 
waves  of  Lake  Superior  for  about  fourteen  hours. 

This  is  One  of  the  Most  Remarkable  Photographs 
Ever  Taken  on  the  Lakes.  It  Shows  a  Sinking 
Lumber  Barge  just  as  She  Was  Breaking  in  Two  no 

The  photograph  was  taken  from  a  small  boat. 

The  Residence  of  Ansley  Wilcox  at  Buffalo     .  .114 

Where  President  Roosevelt  took  the  oath  of  office. 
Copyright  igo8  by  Detroit  Photographic  Co. 

A  Bird's-eye  View  of  the  Harbour  of  Duluth,  Taken 

from  the  Hill       ......   116 

From  a  Photograph  by  Maher,  Duluth. 

The  Ship  Canal  and  Aerial  Bridge,  Duluth,  Minn.  118 

Copyright  jgo8  by  Detroit  Photographic  Co. 

Fleet  of  Boats  in  Duluth  Harbour  Waiting  to  Un- 
load   122 

View  Looking  South-west  from  the  New  Chamber  of 

Commerce  Building,  Buffalo  .  .  .124 

Unloading  at  One  of  the  Coal  Docks  at  Duluth         .   126 


Illustrations  xv 

Page 
A  Fleet  of  Erie  Canal  Boats — Capacity  of  Each  ijo 

Tons 128 

The  boats  on  the  new  canal  will  be  1000  tons  each. 

The  Jack-Knife  Bridge  at  Buffalo  .  .  .   132 

A  Scene  on  Blackwell  Canal         .  .  .  -   ^34 

The  winter  home  of  big  boats  in  Buffalo. 

Some  of  the  Grain  Elevators  at  Duluth,  which  Have 
a  Combined  Storage  Capacity  of  3j,jjo,ooo 
Bushels 136 

The  Mesaba  Ore  Docks        .....   138 

From  the  Deck  of  the  Ship  the  Tug  Looks  Like 

an  Ant  Dragging  at  a  Huge  Prey  .  .  .   142 

Observation  Room  on  the  "  Wm.  G.  Mather''  .  .   144 

Which  gives  an  idea  of  the  luxuriousness  of  the  guests' 
quarters  on  a  Great  Lakes  freighter. 

The   Luxurious   Dining-room   on   the   10. 000-Ton 

Steamer  "/.  H.  Sheadle"     ....   146 

Tugs  Trying  to  Release  Boats  Held  in  the  Ice  at  the 

Soo ijo 

Copyright  iqo6  by  Young,  Lord  &  Rhoades,  Ltd. 

Whaleback  Barges  Preparing  for  Winter  Quarters 

at  Conneaut,  Ohio         .....   ij2 

(The  Whaleback  is  a  type  of  vessel  that  has  been  tried  and 
found  wanting.     They  are  going  out  of  use.) 

Ashore     ........   1^4 

Arch  Rock,  Mackinac  Island        .  .  .  .160 

One  of  the  natural  wonders  of  the  world. 

Fort  Mackinac  .  .  .  .  .  .168 


xvi  Illustrations 

Page 
Marquette's  Grave,  St.  Ignace,  Michigan         .  •   -^74 

Monument  at  Put-in-Bay  in  Memory  of  the  British 
and  Americans  who  Died  in  the  Battle  of  Lake 
Erie 182 

Old  West  Blockhouse,  Fort  Mackinac    .  .        .   186 

Built  by  the  British,  about  1780. 

The  Monument  Erected  to  those  who  Fought  and 

Died  on  Mackinac  Island      .  .  .        .   igo 

Mackinac  Island,  Showing  Old  Fort  Mackinac        .   ig4 

Once  the  Scene  of  Bloodshed  and  Strife,  these  Old 
Trees  Stand  where  French,  Indian,  and  British 
Fought  Years  ago         .....  200 

A  View  of  the  Historic  Battle-ground  on  Mackinac 

Island        .......  206 

An  Old  British  Gunboat  Discovered  in   the   River 

Thames      .......  212 

Scene  when  Admiral  Dewey  Passed  through  the 

Soo  Locks  .......  216 

Map At  End 


PART  I 

The    Ships,     their     Owners,    their 
Sailors,  and  their  Cargoes 


The  Building  of  the  Ships 

NOT  long  ago,  I  was  on  a  Lake  freighter  pound- 
ing her  way  up  Huron  on  the  "thousand- 
mile  highway"  that  leads  to  Duluth.  Beside 
me  was  a  man  who  had  climbed  from  poverty  to 
millions.  He  was  riding  in  his  own  ship.  His  in- 
terests burned  ten  thousand  tons  of  coal  a  year.  He 
was  one  of  the  ore  kings  of  the  North — as  rough  as 
the  iron  he  dug,  filled  to  the  brim  with  enthusiasm 
and  animal  energy  of  the  Lake  breed;  a  man  who 
had  helped  to  make  the  Lakes  what  they  are,  as 
scores  of  others  like  him  have  done.  Before  and  be- 
hind us  there  trailed  the  smoke  of  a  dozen  of  the 
steel  leviathans  of  the  Inland  Seas.  I  had  asked 
him  a  question,  and  there  was  the  fire  of  a  great 
pride  in  his  eyes  when  he   answered. 

"It  would  make  a  nation  by  itself — this  Lake 
country!"  he  said.  "And  it  would  be  America. 
It  's  America  from  Buffalo  to  Duluth,  every  inch  of 
it,  and  the  people  who  are  in  it  are  Americans.  That  's 
American  smoke  you  see  off  there,  and  American 
ships  are  making  it;  they  're  run  by  a  thousand  or 


4  The  Great  Lakes 

more  American  captains,  and  they  're  Americans 
fore  'n'  aft,  too.  We  've  got  only  eight  States  along 
the  Lakes,  but  if  we  should  secede  to-morrow  the 
world  would  find  us  the  heart  and  power  of  the 
nation.     That  's  how  American  we  are!" 

This  is  the  patriotism  one  finds  in  the  Lake  country, 
from  the  roaring  furnaces  of  the  East  to  the  vast  ore 
beds  of  Minnesota.  It  is  representative  of  the  spirit 
that  rules  the  Inland  Seas;  it  is  this  spirit  that  has 
built  an  empire,  and  is  building  a  vaster  empire  to- 
day, along  the  edges  of  the  world's  greatest  fresh- 
water highways. 

With  more  than  thirty-four  millions  of  people 
living  in  the  States  bordering  on  them,  possessing 
one  third  of  the  total  tonnage  of  North  America,  and 
saving  to  the  people  of  the  United  States  five  hundred 
million  dollars  each  year,  or  six  dollars  for  every 
man,  woman,  and  child  in  the  country,  one  of  the 
most  inexplainable  mysteries  of  the  century  exists 
in  the  fact  that  the  Great  Lakes  of  to-day  are  as 
little  known  to  the  vast  majority  of  Americans  as 
they  were  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  While  revo- 
lutions have  been  working  in  almost  all  lines  of  in- 
dustry, while  States  have  been  made  and  cities  bom, 
America's  great  Inland  Seas  have  remained  unwatched 
and  unknown  except  by  a  comparative  few.  Upon 
them  have  grown  the  greatest  industries  of  the  na- 
tion, yet  the  national  ignorance  concerning  them 
can  hardly  find  a  parallel  in  history.     Were  they  to 


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The  Building  of  the  Ships  5 

disappear  to-morrow  the  industrial  supremacy  of  the 
republic  would  receive  a  blow  from  which  it  could 
never  recover.  The  steel  industry,  as  a  dominant 
commercial  factor,  would  almost  cease  to  exist.  One 
half  of  the  total  population  of  the  country  would  be 
seriously  affected,  and  America  would  fall  far  behind 
in  the  commercial  race  of  the  nations. 

Notwithstanding  these  things,  not  one  person  in 
ten  knows  what  the  Great  Lakes  stand  for  to-day. 
While  a  thousand  writers  have  sung  of  the  greatness 
and  romance  of  the  watery  wastes  that  encircle  con- 
tinents, none  has  told  of  those  "vast  unsalted  seas" 
which  mean  more  to  eighty-five  millions  of  Amer- 
icans than  any  one  of  the  five  oceans.  What  has 
been  written  has  been  for  those  who  find  their  com- 
merce upon  them;  for  the  owners  of  ships  and  the 
masters  of  men;  for  the  kings  of  ore  and  grain — a 
little  statistical  matter  here  and  a  little  there,  but 
nothing  for  the  millions  who  are  not  at  hand  to  feel 
the  pulse  of  traffic  or  to  see  the  great  commercial 
pageant  as  it  passes  before  their  eyes.  Even  of  those 
who  live  in  the  States  bordering  the  Great  Lakes  but 
few  know  that  these  fresh-water  highways  of  traffic 
possess  the  greatest  shipping  port  in  the  world, 
that  upon  them  floats  the  largest  single  fleet  of 
freighters  in  existence,  that  in  their  great  con- 
struction yards  shipbuilding  has  been  reduced  to 
a  science  as  nowhere  else  on  earth,  and  that  in 
their    life    the    elements    of    romance    and    tragedy 


6  The  Great  Lakes 

play  their  parts  even  as  on  the  big  oceans  that 
divide  hemispheres. 

In  a  small  way  the  general  lack  of  knowledge  of 
the  Great  Lakes  is  excusable,  for  their  development 
has  been  so  rapid  and  so  stupendous  that  people  have 
not  yet  grasped  its  significance.  Within  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century  or  less  they  have  become  the 
industrial  magnets  of  the  nation.  Along  their  shores 
have  sprung  up  our  greatest  cities,  with  populations 
increasing  more  rapidly  than  those  of  New  York, 
Boston,  Philadelphia,  or  San  Francisco.  In  the  eight 
States  which  have  ports  on  them  is  more  than  one 
third  of  the  total  population  of  the  North  American 
continent.  Along  their  three  thousand  three  hund- 
red and  eighty-five  miles  of  United  States  shore 
line  will  be  built  this  year  more  than  one  half  of  the 
tonnage  constructed  in  America,  and  over  their  high- 
ways will  travel  at  least  six  times  as  much  freight  as 
all  the  nations  of  the  world  carried  through  the  Suez 
Canal  in  1908. 

Just  what  this  means  it  is  hard  for  one  to  conceive 
when  told  only  in  figures.  Perhaps  in  no  better  way 
can  the  immensity  and  importance  of  their  traffic  be 
described  than  by  showing  briefly  one  of  the  ways 
in  which  they  earned  a  "dividend"  of  six  dollars  for 
every  person  living  in  the  United  States  in  1907. 
This  immense  "dividend"  did  not  go  into  the  coffers 
of  corporations,  but  actually,  though  indirectly,  into 
the  pockets  of  the  people. 


The  Building  of  the  Ships  7 

It  is  only  fair  to  the  Lakes  and  the  vast  interests 
upon  them  to  use  the  figures  of  1907  instead  of  those 
of  1908.  In  the  following  pages  it  is  the  author's 
intention  to  paint  conditions  as  they  actually  exist 
upon  our  Inland  Seas  under  normal  conditions.  During 
1908,  the  financial  depression  that  swept  over  the 
entire  country  produced  conditions  upon  the  Lakes 
which,  in  the  author's  opinion,  will  not  be  seen  again 
for  a  great  many  years  to  come.  "Panic  figures" 
give  a  wrong  impression.  Those  of  1908  would 
show  a  falling  off  of  business  in  various  branches  of 
Lake  traffic  of  from  twenty  to  sixty  per  cent.  As  one 
of  the  best  known  vessel  men  in  Duluth  said  to  me 
recently,  "We  can  count  that  the  Lakes  have  lost 
just  one  year  of  progress  because  of  the  panic."  In 
other  words,  it  is  highly  probable  that  the  business 
of  the  Lakes  will  in  this  year  of  1909  be  just  about 
what  it  should  have  been  under  normal  conditions 
in  1908,  and  there  are  many  who  believe  that  within 
the  next  two  years  the  loss  of  the  "  panic  year"  will  be 
more  than  discounted. 

For  this  reason,  in  order  to  show  how  the  Lakes 
earn  their  tremendous  dividend  for  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  we  use  the  figures  of  1907,  when  traffic 
was  normal.  In  that  year,  for  instance,  it  cost  a 
little  over  ten  cents  to  ship  a  bushel  of  grain  from 
Chicago  to  New  York  by  rail,  and  only  five  and  one 
half  cents  by  way  of  the  Lakes  and  the  Erie  Canal. 
This  saving  on  transportation  of  five  cents  a  bushel 


8  The  Great  Lakes 

is  divided  between  the  producing  farmer  and  the 
consuming  public.  It  is  a  "nickel  on  which  no  trust 
can  place  its  hands" — and  this  nickel,  when  multi- 
plied by  the  number  of  bushels  of  grain  produced  in 
Ohio,  Illinois,  Indiana,  Wisconsin,  Iowa,  and  Michi- 
gan, reaches  the  stupendous  figure  of  ninety-eight 
million  dollars!  In  the  matter  of  iron  ore  the  saving 
is  still  greater.  Were  it  not  for  this  saving  all  steel 
necessities,  from  rails  to  common  kitchen  forks,  would 
advance  tremendously  in  price,  and  the  United  States 
would  not  be  able  to  control  the  steel  markets  of  the 
world.  To-day  you  can  ship  a  ton  of  ore  from  Duluth 
to  Ashtabula,  Conneaut,  or  Cleveland,  a  distance  of 
nearly  one  thousand  miles,  for  less  than  you  can  send 
by  rail  that  same  ton  from  one  of  these  ports  to  Pitts- 
burg, a  distance  of  only  one  hundred  and  thirty  miles. 
In  other  words,  while  it  costs  about  eighty  cents  to 
send  a  ton  of  ore  from  the  vast  ranges  of  the  North 
to  an  Erie  port  by  ship,  the  rail  rate  is  seven  times 
greater,  which  means  that  the  vessels  of  the  Great 
Lakes  saved  in  1907  on  ore  alone  no  less  than  one 
hundred  and  seventy-three  million  dollars! 

In  another  way  than  in  this  annual  saving  in  cost 
of  transportation  are  the  Lakes  fighting  a  great  and 
almost  unappreciated  battle  for  the  people.  They 
are  to-day  the  country's  greatest  safeguard  against 
excessive  railroad  charges.  They  are  the  governors 
of  the  nation's  internal  commerce,  and  will  be  for  all 
time  to  come.     There  is  not  a  State  north  of  the  Ohio 


The  Building  of  the  Ships  9 

River  and  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  which  is  not 
affected  by  their  cheap  transportation,  and  the  day 
is  not  distant  when  hundreds  of  millions  of  bushels  of 
grain  raised  in  the  Canadian  west  will  go  to  the  sea- 
board by  way  of  the  lake  and  canal  route.  At  the 
present  time  there  are  about  two  hundred  and  forty 
thousand  miles  of  railroad  in  the  United  States,  con- 
structed and  equipped  at  a  cost  of  more  than  thirteen 
billion  dollars;  yet,  on  the  basis  of  ton  miles,  the 
traffic  on  the  Lakes  will  in  1909  be  one  sixth  as  great 
as  on  all  the  roads  in  the  country. 

These  facts  are  given  here  to  show  in  a  small  way 
the  gigantic  part  the  Great  Lakes  are  playing  to-day 
in  the  industrial  progress  of  the  nation.  Yet,  as  par- 
adoxical as  it  may  seem,  the  nation  itself  has  hardly 
recognised  the  truth.  The  "helping"  hand  that  the 
Government  has  reached  out  has  been  pathetically 
weak.  In  history  to  come  it  must  be  recorded  that 
great  men — men  of  brain  and  brawn  and  courage — 
have  "built  up"  the  Lakes,  and  not  the  Government. 
And  these  men,  scores  and  hundreds  of  them,  are 
continuing  the  work  to-day.  Since  the  dawn  of  inde- 
pendence to  the  present  time,  the  United  States  has 
expended  for  all  harbours  and  waterways  on  the  Great 
Lakes  above  the  Niagara  Falls  less  than  ninety  million 
dollars,  yet  each  year  this  same  Government  hands  out 
one  hundred  and  forty  million  dollars  to  the  army  and 
navy  and  one  hundred  and  twenty-seven  million  dollars 
to  the  postal  service !     In  the  face  of  this  is  the  aston- 


lo  The  Great  Lakes 

ishing  fact  that,  in  1907,  the  saving  in  freight  rates  on 
Lake  Superior  commerce  alone  exceeded  by  a  million 
dollars  the  total  sum  expended  by  the  Government  on 
the  Inland  Seas  since  the  day  the  first  ship  was 
launched  upon  them! 

In  this  building  of  the  "greater  empire"  of  the  Lake 
country  there  is  now  no  rest.  Wherever  ships  are 
built  the  stocks  are  filled.  From  the  uttermost  end 
of  Erie  to  the  shipyards  of  the  north — in  Buffalo, 
Lorain,  Cleveland,  Toledo,  Detroit,  West  Superior, 
Chicago,  and  Manitowoc — the  making  of  American 
ships  is  being  rushed  as  never  before.  In  the  larger 
yards  powerful  arc-light  systems  allow  of  work  by  night 
as  well  as  by  day.  The  roaring  of  forges,  the  hammer- 
ing of  steel,  the  tumult  of  labouring  men,  and  the 
rumbling  of  giant  cranes  are  seldom  stilled.  With 
almost  magical  quickness  a  ten-thousand-ton  mon- 
ster of  steel  rises  on  the  stocks — and  is  gone.  An- 
other takes  its  place,  and  even  as  they  follow  one 
another  into  the  sea,  racing  to  fill  demands,  there  still 
comes  the  cry:  "Ships — ^ships — we  want  more  ships ! " 

In  the  year  1908,  it  is  estimated  that  very  nearly 
three  fifths  of  the  total  ship  tonnage  built  in  the 
United  States  was  constructed  in  these  busy  yards 
of  the  Great  Lakes.  As  early  as  January  they  were 
choked  with  orders  for  1908  delivery,  and  even  that 
early  a  number  of  them  had  orders  running  well  into 
1909.  A  brief  glance  at  the  vessel  construction  of 
the  Lakes  during  the  six  years  up  to  and  including 


fc/) 


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The  Building  of  the  Ships  ii 

1907  will  give  a  good  idea  of  the  rapid  growth  of  this 
industry  along  the  Inland  Seas.  In  1902,  the  product 
was  forty-two  vessels,  thirty-two  of  them  being  bulk 
freighters.  In  1903,  forty-two  of  the  fifty  vessels 
built  were  bulk  freight  steamers,  with  a  carrying 
capacity  of  213,250  tons.  In  1904,  the  output  was 
only  thirteen  vessels,  but  in  1905  twenty-nine  bulk 
freighters  with  a  carrying  capacity  of  260,000  tons 
were  built.  In  1906,  there  were  turned  out  from  the 
Great  Lakes  yards  forty-seven  vessels,  of  which  forty 
were  bulk  freighters,  and  in  1907,  the  total  was  fifty- 
six  vessels,  including  forty  bulk  freighters,  three 
package  freighters,  and  one  passenger  steamer.  The 
early  months  of  1908  saw  contracts  in  force  for  the 
construction  of  twenty-five  bulk  freighters  for  de- 
livery before  1909. 

Taking  the  forty  bulk  freighters  built  in  1907,  one 
gets  a  fair  idea  of  the  immensity  of  Lake  traffic. 
They  are  but  a  drop  in  the  bucket — a  single  year's 
contribution  to  the  great  argosies  of  the  Inland  Seas; 
yet  these  forty  ships  have  a  carrying  capacity  of 
three  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  tons.  In  other 
words,  within  four  days  after  loading  at  Duluth  they 
could  be  discharging  this  mountain  of  ore  at  Erie 
ports.  To  carry  this  same  "cargo"  by  rail  would 
require  over  three  hundred  trains  of  thirty  cars  each, 
or  a  single  train  seventy  miles  in  length! 

But  this  is  not  particularly  astonishing  when  one  is 
studying  the  commerce  of  the  Great  Lakes,     True, 


12  The  Great  Lakes 

it  represents  considerably  over  a  half  of  the  tonnage 
built  in  the  United  States  during  1907,  but  even  at 
that  it  "isn't  much  to  shout  about,"  as  one  builder 
of  ships  said  to  me.  These  men  of  the  Lakes  never 
express  surprise  at  the  wonders  of  the  Inland  Seas. 
They  are  used  to  them.  They  meet  with  them  every 
day  of  their  lives.  On  either  coast  these  same  "won- 
ders" would  be  made  much  of.  But  the  Lake  breed 
is  not  the  breed  that  boasts — ^unless  you  drag  opinions 
from  them.  Why,  over  in  Cleveland  there  is  one  man 
who  directs  the  destinies  of  twice  as  many  ships  as 
the  forty-eight  mentioned  above — a  single  commercial 
navy  that  can  move  six  hundred  and  forty-eight  thou- 
sand tons  of  ore  in  one  trip,  or  enough  to  "make  up" 
a  train  of  sixteen  thousand  two  hundred  cars,  which 
train  would  be  one  hundred  and  twenty  miles  in 
length!  This  man's  name  is  Coulby — Harry  Coulby, 
President  and  General  Manager  of  the  Pittsburg 
Steamship  Company,  Lake  arm  of  the  United  States 
Steel  Corporation.  There  was  a  time  when  Coulby 
was  a  poor  mechanic,  working  his  ten  hours  a  day. 
Then  he  developed  "talent"  and  went  into  a  ship- 
yard draughting-room.  Now  he  is  undeniably  the 
king  of  Lake  shipping.  His  word  is  law  in  the  di- 
recting of  more  than  a  hundred  vessels,  the  greatest 
fleet  in  the  world ;  and  it  is  law  in  other  ways,  for  it  is 
common  talk  in  marine  circles  that  he  (with  the  trust 
behind  him)  is  responsible  for  nearly  every  important 
move  on  the  Great  Lakes.     He  is  the  eye  and  the 


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The  Building  of  the  Ships  13 

ear  and  the  mouth  of  the  trust,  and  it  is  the  trust  that 
practically  fixes  the  ore  rates  for  each  season,  and 
does  other  things  of  interest.  If  these  ships  of  Coul- 
by's  were  placed  end  to  end  they  would  reach  a  dis- 
tance of  eight  miles!  During  the  eight  months  of 
Lake  navigation  they  can  transport  as  much  freight 
over  the  "thousand-mile  highway"  as  the  combined 
fleets  of  all  nations  take  through  the  Suez  Canal  in 
twelve!  Yet  who  has  heard  of  Coulby?  How  many 
know  of  the  gigantic  fleet  he  controls?  A  few  thou- 
sand Lake  people,  and  that  is  all.  A  magnificent 
illustration  is  this  of  the  national  ignorance  concern- 
ing the  Great  Lakes. 

And  Coulby  is  only  one  of  many.  The  fleet  he 
controls  is  only  one  of  many.  The  Lakes  breed  great 
men — and  they  breed  great  fleets.  How  many  of 
our  millions  have  heard  of  J.  C.  Gilchrist  and  the  Gil- 
christ fleet? — a  man  in  one  way  unique  in  the  marine 
history  of  the  world,  and  a  fleet  which,  if  plying  be- 
tween New  York  and  Liverpool,  would  be  one  of  the 
present-day  sensations.  Gilchrist,  like  Coulby,  * '  worked 
up  from  the  depths,"  and  to-day,  as  the  head  of  the 
Gilchrist  Transportation  Company,  he  holds  down 
seventy-five  distinct  jobs!  Seventy-five  owners  have 
placed  seventy-five  ships  under  his  generalship,  and 
from  each  he  receives  a  salary  of  one  thousand  dollars 
a  season,  or  a  total  of  seventy-five  thousand  dollars. 
He  is  one  of  the  Napoleons  of  the  Lakes.  He  han- 
dles ships  and  men  like  a  magician ;  his  holds  are  never 


14  The  Great  Lakes 

empty;  his  dividends  are  always  large.  There  was  a 
day  when  one  thousand  dollars  looked  like  a  fortune 
to  Gilchrist,  and  when  eight  dollars  a  week  was  an 
income  of  which  he  was  mightily  proud.  That  was 
when,  from  away  down  in  Michigan,  he  turned  his  face 
northward  toward  the  Lakes,  filled  with  big  ambition 
and  a  desire  for  adventure,  but  with  little  more  than 
what  he  carried  on  his  back.  He  got  work  as  a  sailor 
before  the  mast  at  forty  dollars  a  month  and  board. 
From  there  he  graduated  to  "bell  hop"  on  a  passenger 
steamer,  and  continued  to  graduate  until  the  owners 
of  great  ships  began  to  see  in  him  those  things  which 
they  themselves  did  not  possess,  and  so  handed  over  to 
him  the  destiny  of  the  second  greatest  fleet  of  freight 
carriers  in  the  world. 

Such  men  as  Coulby  and  Gilchrist  and  the  ships 
they  have  would  make  the  fame  of  any  nation  on  the 
high  seas.  They  and  men  like  Captain  John  Mitchell, 
who  is  the  head  of  a  fleet  of  twenty  ships,  J.  H.  Sheadle, 
G.  Ashley  Tomlinson,  and  G.  L.  Douglas,  are  of  the 
kind  that  are  choking  the  Great  Lakes  shipyards 
with  orders,  while  along  the  ocean  seaboards  stocks 
are  rotting  and  builders  of  ocean  marine  are  starving. 
Cleveland  claims  the  headquarters  of  both  of  these 
immense  fleets — and  Cleveland  is  fortimate  in  many 
other  things.  She  counts  her  strong  men  of  the  Lakes 
by  the  score.  She  is  a  great  owner  of  ships,  a  great 
buyer  of  ships,  and  a  great  builder. 

But  when  it  comes  to  the  production  of  "bottoms," 


H 


The  Building  of  the  Ships  15 

Cleveland  and  all  other  Lake  cities  must  give  way 
to  Detroit.  There  was  a  day  when  Detroit  was  one 
of  the  important  ports  of  the  Lakes,  but  that  day  is 
long  past.  Now  she  is  the  centre  of  shipbuilding. 
In  1907,  there  was  built  at  Detroit  more  tonnage 
than  in  any  other  city  in  the  United  States.  Of  the 
vessels  launched,  twenty-one  of  the  largest  took  their 
first  dip  in  or  very  near  Detroit.  The  tonnage  of 
these  vessels  aggregated  over  one  half  of  the  total 
tonnage  of  the  forty  freighters  constructed  for  the 
season's  delivery. 

It  has  been  said  that  Detroit  is  a  great  shipbuilding 
city  by  accident,  and  there  is  a  good  deal  of  truth  in 
the  assertion.  Six  years  ago  the  American  Shipbuild- 
ing Company,  the  greatest  trust  of  its  kind  in  the  world, 
held  undisputed  sway  over  the  Lakes.  It  knew  no 
competition.  No  combination  of  capital  had  dared 
to  grapple  with  it.  With  eleven  huge  construction 
yards  strung  along  the  Lakes  between  Buffalo,  Du- 
luth,  and  Chicago,  it  held  a  monopoly  of  the  ship- 
building industry.  It  was  at  this  time  that  one  of 
the  country's  great  industrial  generals  sprang  up  in 
Detroit.  Then  he  was  practically  unknown;  now  as 
a  leader  and  master  of  men,  he  is  known  in  every  city 
of  this  country  where  iron  and  steel  are  used.  His 
name  is  Antonio  C.  Pessano.  Detroit  must  always 
be  proud  of  this  man.  He  must  count  in  the  history 
of  her  future  greatness,  and  always  her  citizens  should 
be  thankful  that  he  and  his  indomitable  courage  did 


1 6  The  Great  Lakes 

not  first  appear  in  BiifEalo,  Cleveland,  or  some  other 
Lake  city.  Mr.  Pessano's  ambition  was  to  build  at 
Detroit  the  most  modem  shipbuilding  plant  in  the 
world.  Some  people  laughed  at  him.  Others  pitied 
him.  The  trust  twiddled  its  fingers,  so  to  speak,  and 
smiled.  In  the  face  of  it  all  Mr.  Pessano  won  the 
confidence  of  such  Gibraltars  of  industrial  finance  as 
George  H.  Russel,  Colonel  Frank  J.  Hecker,  Joseph 
Boyer,  William  G.  Mather,  Henry  B.  Ledyard,  and 
others — won  it  to  the  extent  of  raising  one  million 
five  hundred  thousand  dollars,  with  which  he  built 
the  greatest  shipbuilding  yards  on  the  Lakes  and 
which  have  developed  since  then  into  the  greatest  in 
America,  employing  more  than  three  thousand  men. 

Mr.  Pessano's  shipbuilding  rival  is  the  president  of  the 
trust.  His  name  is  Wallace,  "son  of  Bob  Wallace,  the 
elder,"  Lake  men  will  tell  you,  for  Robert  Wallace, 
the  father,  was  a  shipbuilder  himself  for  a  great  many 
years.     He  is  very  proud  of  his  boy. 

"I  had  three  boys,"  said  he.  "Two  of  'em  went 
to  college,  but  Jim  he  wanted  an  education,  so  he 
did  n't  take  much  stock  in  books,  but  got  out  among 
men.     That  was  what  made  Jim!" 

To-day  it  is  "  Jim,"  or  James  C.  Wallace,  of  Cleve- 
land, as  he  is  better  known,  who  is  the  champion  ship- 
builder of  the  world.  He  is  President  of  the  American 
Shipbuilding  Company.  Probably  in  no  other  part 
of  the  world  is  the  romantic  more  largely  associated 
with  modem  progress  than  on  the  Great  Lakes,  and  in 


■THE 


The  Building  of  the  Ships  17 

these  two  men — Wallace  and  Pessano — it  is  revealed 
in  a  singular  way.  Together  they  govern  shipbuilding 
on  the  Inland  Seas.  Both  of  these  great  men  began  in 
the  dinner-pail  brigade.  They  worked  in  overalls  and 
grease,  not  for  "experience,"  but  because  they  had  to; 
they  pulled  and  heaved  with  common  laboiirers;  they 
rose,  step  by  step,  from  the  lowest  ranks — and  to-day, 
monuments  to  courage  and  ambition,  they  are  the  earth's 
two  greatest  builders  of  ships.  In  a  novel  such  charac- 
ters would  be  declared  almost  impossible.  But  the 
Lakes  breed  such  as  these.  There  are  others  whose 
careers  have  been  even  more  remarkable,  and  I  will 
tell  of  these  later — men  whose  rise  from  poverty  to 
wealth  and  power  rivals  in  romance  and  adventure 
the  most  glowing  stories  of  the  Goulds  and  Astors. 

Mr.  Pessano,  "the  independent,"  does  not  entirely 
monopolise  Detroit  shipbuilding,  for  Wallace  was  there 
ahead  of  him  with  one  of  the  trust's  big  yards,  which 
is  known  under  the  name  of  the  Detroit  Shipbuilding 
Company.  It  materially  assists  in  the  city's  great- 
ness, and  will  continue  to  do  so  more  and  more  each 
year.  During  1907,  it  launched  six  big  freighters  in 
Detroit,  and  that  city,  together  with  eight  other  Lake 
cities,  heaps  blessings  on  the  trust.  For  the  trust  is 
most  generous  and  unprejudiced  in  its  distribution  of 
yards.  It  builds  ships  in  one  huge  yard  at  Superior, 
in  two  at  Chicago,  two  at  Cleveland,  and  in  one  at 
Lorain,  Buffalo,  Wyandotte,  Detroit,  and  Milwaukee. 
Among   these   cities   it   has   distributed   over   fifteen 


1 8  The  Great  Lakes 

million  dollars  in  capital,  and  it  is  estimated  that  it 
affords  a  livelihood  for  between  fifty  and  sixty  thousand 
people.  In  1907,  the  different  yards  built  twice  the 
tonnage  of  the  next  two  largest  shipbuilding  concerns 
in  the  world  combined — those  of  Doxford  and  Sons, 
of  Sunderland,  and  Harland  and  Wolff,  of  Belfast, 
whose  aggregate  tonnage  was  not  over  one  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand.  The  astonishing  rate  at  which 
Lake  shipbuilding  is  increasing  is  shown  in  the  fact 
that  the  trust's  production  for  1907  was  twice  that 
of  1905,  which  was  117,482  tons,  divided  among 
twenty  vessels.  A  new  factor  has  come  into  Lake 
shipbuilding  which  will  count  considerably  in  the 
future.  This  is  the  Toledo  Shipbuilding  Company, 
which  purchased  the  Craig  yards  in  1906,  and  which 
has  expended  a  great  deal  of  money  since  that  time  in 
perfecting  its  plant,  until  now  it  has  one  of  the  most 
modem  construction  yards  on  the  Lakes. 

It  would  seem  that  this  activity  in  Lake  shipyards 
must  soon  supply  demands,  but  such  will  not  be  the 
case  for  many  years  to  come.  While  the  depression 
of  1908  has  cast  its  gloom,  Lake  men  cannot  see  the 
end  of  their  prosperity.  They  are  in  the  midst  of 
fortune-making  days  on  the  Inland  Seas.  To-day  one 
of  the  steel  ships  of  the  Lakes  is  as  good  as  a  gold  mine, 
and  will  continue  to  be  so  for  a  quarter  of  a  century 
to  come.  The  shipyards  are  growing  each  year,  but 
the  increase  of  tonnage  is  outstripping  them,  and  until 
cargo  and  ships  are  more  evenly  balanced  the  owners 


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The  Building  of  the  Ships      '  19 

of  vessels  on  the  Great  Lakes  must  be  counted  among 
the  most  fortunate  men  in  the  world. 

It  is  only  natural  that  these  conditions  should  have 
developed  shipbuilding  on  the  Lakes  to  a  science  un- 
paralleled in  any  other  part  of  the  earth.  I  once  had 
the  good  fortune  to  talk  with  a  shipbuilder  from  the 
Clyde.  He  had  heard  much  of  the  Lakes.  He  had 
built  ships  for  them.  He  had  heard  of  the  wonders  of 
shipbuilding  in  their  cities.  So  he  had  come  across 
to  see  for  himself. 

*'  I  had  thought  that  your  ships  would  not  compare 
with  ours,"  he  said.  "  You  build  them  so  quickly  that 
I  thought  they  would  surely  be  inferior  to  those  of 
the  Clyde.  But  they  are  the  best  in  the  world;  I  will 
say  that — the  best  in  the  world,  and  you  build  them 
like  magicians !  You  lay  their  keels  to-day — to-morrow 
they  are  gone!" 

This  is  almost  true.  A  ten-thousand-ton  leviathan 
of  the  Lakes  can  now  be  built  almost  as  quickly  as 
carpenters  can  put  up  an  eight-room  house.  Any  one 
of  several  shipyards  can  get  out  one  of  these  monsters 
of  marine  commerce  within  ninety  days,  and  the  record 
stands  with  a  ten-thousand-ton  vessel  that  was  launched 
fifty-three  days  after  her  keel  was  laid!  One  hardly 
realises  what  this  means  until  he  knows  of  a  few  of  the 
things  that  go  into  the  construction  of  such  a  vessel. 
Take  the  steamer  Thomas  F.  Cole,  for  instance,  launched 
early  in  1907  by  the  Great  Lakes  Engineering  Works. 
This  vessel  is  the  giant  of  the  Lakes,  and  is  six  hundred 


20  The  Great  Lakes 

and  five  feet  and  five  inches  long.  She  is  fifty-eight 
feet  beam  and  thirty-two  feet  deep,  and  in  a  single 
trip  can  carry  as  great  a  load  as  three  hundred  freight 
cars,  or  twelve  thousand  tons.  In  her  are  nine  million 
five  hundred  thousand  pounds  of  iron  and  steel! 
What  does  this  mean?  It  means  that  if  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  in  Indiana,  Michigan,  Wisconsin, 
and  Minnesota  were  to  join  in  carrying  this  material 
to  a  certain  place,  each  person  would  have  to  trans- 
port one  pound.  In  the  mass  would  be  eight  hundred 
thousand  rivets,  ranging  in  size  from  five  eighths  of 
an  inch  to  one  and  one  eighth  inches  in  diameter. 

One  who  is  investigating  Lake  shipbuilding  for  the 
first  time  will  be  astonished  to  discover  that  the  modem 
freighter  is  in  many  ways  a  huge  private  yacht.  They 
are  almost  without  exception  owned  by  men  of  wealth, 
and  their  cabins  are  fitted  out  even  more  luxuri- 
ously than  those  of  passenger  boats,  for  while  these 
latter  are  intended  for  the  use  of  the  public,  the  pas- 
senger accommodations  of  freighters  are  planned  for 
the  friends  and  families  of  the  owners.  So  above  the 
deck  which  conceals  ten  thousand  tons  of  ore  the 
vessel  may  be  a  floating  palace.  The  keenest  rivalry 
exists  between  owners  as  to  who  shall  possess  the  finest 
ships,  and  fortunes  are  expended  in  the  fittings  of 
cabins  alone.  Nothing  that  money  can  secure  is  omit- 
ted. In  the  words  of  a  builder:  "  The  modem  freighter 
is  like  a  modem  hotel — only  much  more  luxuriously  fur- 
nished."    There  is  an  electric  light  system  throughout 


The  Building  of  the  Ships  21 

the  ship ;  the  cabins  are  equipped  with  telephones ;  there 
is  steam  heat ;  there  are  kitchens  with  the  latest  cooking 
devices,  elegantly  appointed  dining-rooms;  there  are 
state-rooms  which  are  like  the  apartments  in  a  palace, 
and  other  things  which  one  would  not  expect  to  see 
beyond  the  black  and  forbidding  steel  walls  of  these 
fortune-makers  of  the  Lakes. 

With  the  first  peep  into  modem  methods  one  realises 
that  the  romantic  shipbuilding  days  of  old  are  gone. 
No  longer  does  the  shape,  beauty,  and  speed  of  a  vessel 
depend  upon  the  eyes  and  hands  of  the  men  who  are 
actually  putting  it  together.  For  the  ship  of  to-day 
is  built  in  the  engineering  offices.  In  the  draughting- 
room  skilled  men  lay  out  the  plans  and  make  the 
models  for  a  ship  just  as  an  architect  does  for  a  house, 
and  when  these  plans  are  done  they  go  to  a  great 
building  which  reminds  one  of  a  vast  dance  hall,  and 
which  is  known  as  the  "mould  loft."  Seemingly  the 
place  is  not  used.  Yet  at  the  very  moment  you  are 
looking  about,  wondering  what  this  vacancy  has  to  do 
with  shipbuilding,  you  are  walking  on  the  decks  of  a 
ship.  All  about  upon  the  floor,  if  you  notice  carefully, 
you  will  see  hundreds  and  thousands  of  lines,  and 
every  one  of  these  lines  represents  a  line  of  the  freighter 
which  within  three  or  four  months  will  be  taking  her 
trial  trip.  Here  upon  the  floor  is  drawn  the  "line 
ship"  in  exactly  the  same  size  as  the  vessel  which  is 
to  be  built.  Over  certain  sections  of  this  "line  ship" 
men  place  very  thin  pieces  of  basswood,  which  they 


22  The  Great  Lakes 

frame  together  in  the  identical  size  and  shape  of  the 
ship's  plates.  By  the  use  of  these  moulds,  or  tem- 
plates, the  workman  can  see  just  where  the  rivet  holes 
should  be,  and  wherever  a  rivet  is  to  go  he  puts  a 
little  spot  of  paint.  These  model  plates  are  then 
numbered  and  sent  to  the  "plate  department,"  where 
the  real  sheets  of  steel  are  made  to  conform  with  them 
and  where  the  one  million  five  hundred  thousand  or 
more  rivet  holes  are  punched.  With  the  plates  ready, 
the  real  ship  quickly  takes  size  and  form. 

Some  morning  a  little  army  of  men  begins  work 
where  to  the  ordinary  observer  there  is  nothing  but 
piles  of  steel  and  big  timbers.  From  a  distance  the 
scene  reminds  one  of  a  partly  depleted  lumber  yard. 
On  one  side  of  this,  and  within  a  few  yards  of  the  water 
of  a  slip,  are  first  set  up  with  mathematical  accuracy 
a  number  of  square  timbers  called  "keel  blocks." 
Upon  these  blocks  will  rest  the  bottom  of  the  ship, 
and  from  them  to  the  water's  edge  run  long  shelving 
timbers,  or  "ways,"  down  which  she  will  slide  when 
ready  for  launching. 

Children  frequently  play  with  blocks  which,  when 
placed  together  according  to  the  numbers  on  them, 
form  a  map  of  the  United  States.  This  is  modem 
shipbuilding — in  a  way.  It  is  on  the  same  idea. 
There  is  a  proper  place  for  every  steel  plate  in  the 
yards,  and  the  numbers  on  them  are  what  locate  them 
in  the  ship.  A  giant  crane  runs  overhead,  reaches 
down,  seizes  a  certain  plate,  rumbles  back,  to  hover 


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The  Building  of  the  Ships  23 

for  a  moment  over  the  growing  "floor,"  lowers  its 
burden — and  the  iron  workers  do  the  rest.  Within  a 
few  days  work  has  reached  a  point  where  you  begin 
to  wonder,  and  for  the  first  time,  perhaps,  you  realise 
what  an  intricate  affair  a  great  ship  really  is,  and  what 
precautions  are  taken  to  keep  it  from  sinking  in  col- 
lision or  storm.  You  begin  to  see  that  a  Lake 
freighter  is  what  might  be  described  as  two  ships, 
one  built  within  the  other.  As  the  vessel  increases 
in  size,  as  the  sides  of  it,  as  well  as  the  bottom, 
are  put  together,  there  are  two  little  armies  of  men 
at  work — one  on  the  outer  ship  and  one  on  the  inner. 
From  the  bottom  and  sides  of  the  first  steel  shell  of 
the  ship  there  extend  upward  and  inward  heavy  steel 
supports,  upon  which  are  laid  the  plates  of  the  "  inner 
ship."  In  the  space  between  these  two  walls  will  be 
carried  water  ballast.  The  chambers  into  which  it 
is  divided  are  the  life-preservers  of  the  vessel,  A 
dozen  holes  may  be  punched  into  her,  but  just  as 
long  as  only  this  outer  and  protecting  ship  suffers, 
and  the  inner  ship  is  not  perforated,  the  carrier  and 
her  ten-thousand-ton  cargo  will  keep  afloat. 

When  the  construction  of  the  vessel  has  reached  a 
point  where  men  can  work  on  the  inner  as  well  as  the 
outer  hull,  it  is  not  uncommon  for  six  hundred  to 
eight  hundred  workmen  to  be  engaged  on  her  at  one 
time.  Frequently  as  high  as  one  hundred  gangs  of 
riveters,  of  four  men  each,  are  at  work  simultaneously, 
and  at  such  times  the  pounding  of  the   automatic 


24  The  Great  Lakes 

riveting  machines  sounds  at  the  distance  of  half  a  mile 
like  a  battery  of  Gatling  guns  in  action.  So  the  work 
Continues  imtil  every  plate  is  in  place  and  the  vessel 
is  ready  for  launching,  which  is  the  most  exciting 
moment  in  the  career  of  the  ship — ^unless  at  some 
future  day  she  meets  a  tragic  end  at  sea.  One  by 
one  the  blocks  which  have  been  placed  under  her 
bottom  are  removed,  until  only  two  remain,  one  at 
each  end.  Then,  at  the  last  moment,  these  two  are 
pulled  away  simultaneously,  and  the  steel  monster 
slides  sidewise  down  the  greased  ways  until,  with  a 
thunderous  crash  of  water,  she  plunges  into  her  native 
element. 

Thus  ends  the  building  of  the  ship,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  what  is  known  as  her  "deck  work,"  the  fitting 
of  her  luxurious  cabins,  the  placing  of  her  engines, 
and  a  score  of  other  things  which  are  done  after  she 
is  afloat.  She  is  now  a  "carrier"  of  the  Lakes.  A 
little  longer  and  captain  and  crew  take  possession  of 
her,  clouds  of  bituminous  smoke  rise  from  her  funnels, 
and  with  flying  pennants  and  screaming  whistles 
she  turns  her  nose  into  the  great  highway  that  leads 
a  thousand  miles  into  the  North — to  the  land  of  the 
ore  kings. 


II 

What  the  Ships  Carry — Ore 

PICTURE  a  train  of  forty-ton  freight  cars  loaded 
to  capacity,  the  engine  and  caboose  both  in 
New  York  City,  yet  extending  in  an  unbroken 
Hne  entirely  around  the  earth  —  a  train  reaching 
along  a  parallel  from  New  York  to  San  Francisco, 
across  the  Pacific,  the  Chinese  Empire,  Turkestan, 
Persia,  the  Mediterranean,  and  the  Atlantic — and  you 
have  an  idea  of  what  the  ships  of  the  Great  Lakes 
carry  during  a  single  eight  months'  season  of  naviga- 
tion. At  least  you  have  the  part  of  an  idea.  For 
were  such  a  train  conceivable,  it  would  not  only  com- 
pletely engirdle  the  earth  along  the  fortieth  degree 
of  north  latitude,  but  there  would  still  be  something 
like  two  thousand  miles  of  it  left  over.  In  it  would 
be  two  million  five  hundred  thousand  cars,  and  it 
would  carry  one  hundred  million  tons  of  freight! 
Were  this  train  to  pass  you  at  a  given  point  at  the 
rate  of  twenty  miles  an  hour,  you  would  have  to 
stand  there  forty  days  and  forty  nights  to  see  the 
end  of  it. 

Only  by  allowing  the  imagination  to  paint  such  a 

2S 


26  The  Great  Lakes 

picture  as  this  can  one  conceive  to  any  degree  at  all 
the  immensity  of  the  freight  traffic  on  our  Inland 
Seas. 

"A  himdred  million  tons,"  repeated  the  mayor  of 
one  of  our  Lake  ports  when  I  told  him  about  it  recently. 
"A  himdred  million  tons!  That  's  quite  a  lot  of  stiifE, 
is  n't  it?" 

Quite  a  lot  of  stuff!  It  might  have  been  a  hundred 
million  bushels  and  he  would  have  been  equally  sur- 
prised. His  lack  of  enthusiasm  does  not  discredit 
him.  He  does  not  own  ships;  neither  does  he  fill  them. 
He  is  like  the  vast  majority  of  our  millions,  who  have 
never  given  more  than  a  passing  thought  to  that  gigantic 
inland  water  commerce  which  has  largely  been  the 
making  of  the  nation.  It  did  not  dawn  on  him  that 
it  meant  more  than  a  ton  for  every  man,  woman,  and 
child  on  this  North  American  continent;  that  in 
dollars  it  cotmted  billions;  that  on  it  depended  the 
existence  of  cities;  that  largely  because  of  it  foreign 
nations  acknowledged  our  commercial  prestige. 

No  other  hundred  million  tons  of  freight  in  all  the 
world  is  as  important  to  Americans  as  this  annual 
traffic  of  the  Great  Lakes.  To  move  it  requires  the 
services  of  nearly  three  thousand  vessels  of  all  kinds, 
employing  twenty-five  thousand  men  at  an  aggregate 
wage  of  thirteen  million  doUars  a  year.  A  million 
working  people  are  fed  and  clothed  and  housed  because 
of  the  cargoes  this  huge  argosy  carries  from  port  to 
port. 


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What  the  Ships  Carry — Ore  27 

It  is  impossible  to  say  with  accuracy  how  this 
hundred  million  tons  of  freight  is  distributed  and 
of  what  it  consists.  Only  at  the  Soo  and  at  Detroit 
are  records  kept  of  passing  tonnage,  so  the  figures 
which  are  given  showing  the  tremendous  commerce 
that  passes  these  places  do  not  include  the  enormous 
tonnage  which  is  loaded  and  emptied  without  passing 
through  the  Detroit  River  or  the  Sault  Ste.  Marie 
canals.  The  Detroit  River  is  the  greatest  waterway 
of  commerce  in  the  world,  and  in  1906  there  passed 
through  it  over  sixty  million  tons,  or  more  than  three 
fifths  of  the  total  tonnage  of  the  Lakes.  Of  this  about 
a  quarter  moved  in  a  northerly  direction  and  three 
quarters  toward  the  cities  of  the  East.  The  principal 
item  of  the  up-bound  traffic  was  14,000,000  tons 
of  coal,  of  the  south-bound  37,513,600  tons  of  iron 
ore,  110,598,927  bushels  of  grain,  1,159,757  tons  of 
flour,  14,888,927  bushels  of  flaxseed,  and  over  1,000,- 
000,000  feet  of  lumber.  In  1907,  there  was  a  big 
increase,  the  commerce  passing  through  the  Detroit 
River  being  over  75,000,000  tons. 

"And  when  you  are  figuring  out  what  the  ships 
carry,  be  sure  and  don't  leave  out  the  smoke!"  said 
the  captain  of  an  ore  carrier,  pointing  over  our  port 
to  a  black  trail  half  a  mile  long.  "Never  thought  of 
it,  did  you?  Well,  last  year  our  Lake  ships  burned 
three  million  tons  of  coal.  Think  of  it!  Three  mil- 
lion tons — enough  to  heat  every  home  in  Chicago  for 
two  years!" 


28  The  Great  Lakes 

But  in  this  chapter  I  am  not  going  to  deal  with 
smoke;  neither  with  the  grain  that  feeds  nations,  nor 
the  lumber  that  builds  their  homes.  They  will 
be  described  in  their  time.  The  backbone  of 
American  manufacturing  industry — the  mainspring 
of  our  commercial  prestige  abroad — is  iron;  and  it 
is  this  iron,  gathered  in  the  one-time  wildernesses  of 
the  Northland  and  brought  down  a  thousand  miles 
by  ship,  that  stands  largely  for  the  greatness  of  the 
Lakes  to-day.  "Gold  is  precious,  but  iron  is  price- 
less," said  Andrew  Carnegie.  "  The  wheels  of  progress 
may  run  without  the  gleam  of  yellow  metal,  but  never 
without  our  ugly  ore."  And  the  Lake  country,  or 
three  little  patches  of  it,  produce  each  year  nearly  a 
half  of  the  earth's  total  supply  of  iron.  Farmers  in 
the  wake  of  their  ploughshares,  our  millions  of  workers 
in  metal,  and  our  other  millions  whose  fingers  daily 
touch  the  chill  of  iron  have  never  dreamed  of  this. 
Few  of  them  know  that  eight  hundred  great  vessels 
are  engaged  solely  in  the  iron  ore  traffic;  that  in  a 
single  trip  this  immense  fleet  can  transport  more 
than  three  million  tons,  and  that  in  1907,  they  brought 
to  the  foundries  of  the  East  and  South  over  forty- 
one  million  tons.  If  every  man,  woman,  and  child, 
savage  or  civilised,  that  inhabits  this  earth  of  ours 
were  to  receive  equal  portions  of  this  one  product 
carried  by  Lake  vessels  in  1907,  each  person's  share 
would  be  forty  poimds!  And  still  the  world  is  cry- 
ing for  iron.     There  is   not   enough   to   supply  the 


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What  the  Ships  Carry — Ore  29 

demand,  and  there  never  will  be.  The  iron  ore 
traffic  of  the  Lakes  has  doubled  during  the  last 
six  years;  it  will  double  again  during  the  next 
ten — and  iron  will  still  be  the  most  precious  thing 
on  earth. 

If  the  iron  ore  mines  of  the  North  were  to  go  out 
of  existence  to-morrow  nearly  half  of  the  commerce 
of  the  Inland  Seas  would  cease  to  be.  With  it  would 
go  the  strongest  men  of  the  Lakes.  For  our  iron  has 
made  iron  men.  In  that  Northland,  along  the 
Mesaba,  Goebic,  and  Vermilion  ranges,  from  Duluth's 
back  door  to  the  pine  barrens  of  northern  Michigan 
and  Wisconsin,  they  have  practically  made  them- 
selves rulers  of  the  world's  commerce  in  steel  and  iron. 
To  follow  the  great  ships  of  the  Lakes  over  their 
northward  trail  into  this  coimtry  is  to  enter  into 
realms  of  past  romance  and  adventure  which  would 
furnish  material  for  a  hundred  novels.  But  people 
do  not  know  this.  The  picturesque  days  of  '49,  the 
Australian  fever,  and  the  Klondike  rush  are  as  of 
yesterday  in  memory — but  what  of  this  Northland, 
where  they  load  dirty  ore  into  dirty  ships  and 
carry  it  to  the  dirty  foundries  of  the  East?  Ask 
Captain  Joseph  Sellwood;  ask  the  "three  Merritts," 
Alfred,  Leonidas,  and  N.  B.;  or  John  Uno  Sebenius, 
David  T.  Adams,  and  Martin  Pattison;  ask  any  one 
of  a  score  of  others  who  are  living,  and  who  will  tell 
you  of  the  days  not  so  very  long  ago  when  the  iron 
prospectors  went    out    with    packs    on    their    backs 


3©  The  Great  Lakes 

and  guns  In  their  hands  to  seek  the  "ugly  wealth." 
These  are  of  the  old  generation  of  "iron  men" — the 
men  who  suffered  in  the  days  of  exploration  and  de- 
velopment in  the  wilderness,  who  starved  and  froze, 
who  survived  while  companions  died,  who  suffered 
adventures  and  hardships  in  the  death-like  grip  of 
Northland  winters  that  rival  any  of  those  in  Klon- 
dike history.  And  the  new  generation  that  has  fol- 
lowed is  like  them  in  "the  strength  of  man"  that  is 
in  them.  They  are  a  powerful  breed,  these  iron  kings, 
down  to  the  newest  among  them;  men  like  Thomas 
F.  Cole,  who  rose  from  nothing  to  a  position  of  power 
and  wealth,  and  W.  P.  Snyder,  the  poverty-stricken 
Methodist  minister's  son,  who  has  fought  the  Steel 
Corporation  to  a  standstill  and  who  is  talked  of  as  its 
president  of  the  future. 

It  will  be  a  great  "coming  together"  for  the  iron 
and  steel  industry,  this  winning  of  William  Perm 
Snyder.  To-day  he  is  the  king  of  pig  iron.  When  he 
refused  to  deal  with  those  who  formed  the  United 
States  Steel  Corporation,  his  friends  said  that  he  was 
ruined.  But  he  stood  on  his  feet  alone — and  fought. 
He  got  a  neck  hold  on  the  corporation.  He  cornered 
pig  iron  and  because  of  him  at  the  present  time  the 
corporation  is  paying  very  heavy  prices  for  its  outside 
product.  Snyder  is  worth  fifteen  million  dollars. 
In  1906,  he  cleaned  up  one  million  five  hundred 
thousand  dollars  on  pig  iron  alone,  and  there  is  no 
reason  for  doubting  that  his  1907  earnings  were  greater 


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What  the  Ships  Carry — Ore  31 

still.  He  is  a  powerful  enemy  to  have  as  a  friend — 
and  the  corporation  wants  him,  and  will  probably 
get  him. 

If  you  are  going  into  the  North  to  study  the  ore 
traffic  at  close  range,  the  first  man  you  will  probably 
hear  of  after  leaving  your  ship  is  Thomas  F.  Cole,  of 
Duluth.  You  must  know  Cole  before  you  go  deeper 
into  the  subject  of  the  forty  or  fifty  million  tons  of 
ore  which  the  ships  will  carry  during  the  present  year 
of  1909.  The  United  States  Steel  Corporation  will  use 
about  thirty  million  tons  of  the  total  output  of  the 
ore  regions  this  year,  and  Cole  is  the  United  States 
Steel  Corporation  in  this  big  Northland.  He  is  the 
head  of  the  finest  and  most  delicate  industrial  mechan- 
ism in  the  world.  This  mechanism,  in  a  way,  is  so 
fine  that  it  may  be  said  to  be  almost  non-existent. 
It  is  simply  an  "organized  and  capitalized  intelli- 
gence." The  Steel  Corporation  will  mine  some  eighteen 
or  twenty  million  tons  of  ore  in  Minnesota  alone  this 
year.  Yet  it  owns  not  a  dollar's  worth  of  property 
in  the  State.  As  a  corporation  it  does  no  business  in 
the  State.  It  might  be  described  as  a  huge  octopus, 
and  each  arm  of  this  octopus,  representing  a  big 
mining  interest,  works  independently  of  all  other 
arms  and  of  the  body  of  the  octopus  itself.  Through 
these  arms  the  corporation  accomplishes  its  aims. 
Each  huge  mine  has  its  own  executive  organisation, 
is  responsible  for  its  own  acts — but  it  must  obtain 
results.      The    "  central    intelligence,"     or    body    of 


32  The  Great  Lakes 

the  corporation,  is  there  to  judge  results,  and  Cole 
is  the  power  that  watches  over  all.  Officially  he  is 
known  as  the  president  of  the  Oliver  Mining  Com- 
pany, the  greatest  organisation  of  its  kind  in  existence, 
which  attends  not  only  to  the  Steel  Corporation's 
interests  in  Minnesota,  but  in  Michigan  and  Wiscon- 
sin as  well.  As  the  great  eye  of  the  world's  largest 
trust  he  guards  the  interests  of  thirty-one  mines, 
employs  fifteen  thousand  men,  and  gives  subsistence 
to  sixty  thousand  people. 

Because  of  the  transportation  of  this  mighty  product 
Cole  is  as  closely  associated  with  the  Lakes  and  their 
ships  as  with  the  ranges  and  their  mines.  It  has 
been  said  that  he  was  "bom  between  ships  and  mines," 
and  he  has  always  remained  between  them.  He  is 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  characters  of  the  Inland 
Seas.  Cole  is  only  forty-seven  years  old,  and  for 
thirty-nine  years  he  has  earned  his  own  livelihood, 
and  more.  When  six  years  old,  his  father  was  killed 
in  an  accident  in  the  Phoenix  Mine.  Baby  Tom  was 
the  oldest  of  the  widowed  mother's  little  brood,  and 
he  rose  to  the  occasion.  At  the  age  of  eight  he  became 
a  washboy  in  the  Cliff  stamp  mill.  He  had  hardly 
mastered  his  alphabet;  he  could  barely  read  the  sim- 
plest lines ;  never  in  this  civilised  world  did  a  youngster 
begin  life's  battle  with  greater  odds  against  him.  But 
even  in  these  days  the  great  ambition  was  bom  in 
him,  as  it  was  bom  in  Abraham  Lincola ;  and  like  Lin- 
coln,  in  his  little  wilderness  home  of  poverty  and 


Pi 


o 


X3 
O 

o 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Ore  33 

sorrow,  he  began  educating  himself.  It  took  years. 
But  he  succeeded. 

This  is  the  man  whose  name  you  will  hear  first 
when  you  enter  the  mining  country.  To  chronicle 
his  rise  from  a  dusty  Calumet  office  of  long  ago  to 
his  present  kingdom  of  iron  would  be  to  write  a  book 
of  romance.  And  there  are  others  of  the  iron  barons 
of  the  North  whose  histories  would  be  almost  as  inter- 
esting, even  though  fortune  may  have  smiled  on  them 
less  kindly. 

From  the  immensity  of  the  interests  which  Cole 
superintends  one  might  be  led  to  believe  that  the  iron 
ore  industry  is  almost  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the 
trust.  This,  however,  is  not  so.  For  every  ship  that 
goes  down  into  the  South  for  the  trust  another  leaves 
for  an  independent.  Nearly  every  maker  of  steel 
owns  a  mine  or  two  in  the  ranges  of  Minnesota,  Michi- 
gan, or  Wisconsin.  There  are  five  of  these  ranges. 
The  Mesaba  and  Vermilion  ranges,  both  in  Minnesota, 
produce  about  two  thirds  of  the  total  product  carried 
by  the  ships  of  the  Lakes;  the  Goebic,  Menominee, 
and  Marquette  ranges  are  in  Michigan  and  Wisconsin. 

Somehow  it  is  true  that  nearly  every  great  thing 
associated  with  the  Lakes  is  unusual  in  some  way — 
unusual  to  an  astonishing  degree,  and  the  iron  ore  in- 
dustry is  not  an  exception.  Probably  not  one  person 
in  ten  thousand  knows  that  one  lone  county  in  this 
great  continent  is  the  very  backbone  of  the  steel  in- 
dustry  in   the   United   States.      This   county   is   in 


34  The  Great  Lakes 

Minnesota.  It  is  the  county  of  St.  Louis,  and  is  about 
as  big  as  the  State  of  Massachusetts.  Not  much  more 
than  twenty  years  ago  it  was  a  howling  wilderness. 
Even  a  dozen  years  ago  the  Mesaba  bore  but  little 
evidence  of  the  presence  of  man.  Now  this  country 
is  alive  with  industry.  Buried  in  the  wilderness 
which  still  exists  are  thriving  towns;  where  a  short 
time  ago  deer  and  bear  wandered  unmolested,  is  now 
the  din  of  innumerable  locomotives,  the  rumbling  of 
thousands  of  trains,  the  screeching  of  whistles,  and 
the  constant  groaning  of  steam  shovels.  There  is 
not  a  richer  county  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  In  it 
are  over  one  hundred  mines,  from  which  one  hundred 
and  twenty-three  million  tons  of  ore  have  been  taken 
since  Charlemagne  Tower,  now  Ambassador  to  Ger- 
many, brought  down  the  first  carload  to  Duluth  in 
1884.  These  mines  afford  livelihood  for  more  than 
two  hundred  thousand  people,  and  because  of  them 
St.  Louis  County  possesses  the  greatest  freight  trafhc 
road  in  existence — the  Duluth,  Mesaba,  and  Northern 
Railway — which,  in  1907,  carried  about  fourteen  mil- 
lion tons  of  ore  from  the  mines  to  the  docks. 

This  comparatively  little  comer  of  Minnesota  prac- 
tically runs  the  whole  State  in  so  far  as  expenses  are 
concerned.  To  administer  the  affairs  of  the  State, 
including  all  of  its  activities,  costs  about  two  million 
six  hundred  thousand  dollars,  and,  as  inconceivable 
as  it  may  seem,  the  three  railroads  in  the  ore  region 
pay  in  taxes  one  fifth  of  this  sum.     They  pay  one 


c    -^ 


k  1 


02 


O 

o     ^ 


OF 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Ore  35 

third  of  the  total  railroad  tax  of  the  State,  notwith- 
standing the  fact  that  some  of  the  greatest  lines  in 
the  country  centre  at  Minneapolis  and  St.  Paul.  To 
this  must  be  added  about  seven  hundred  thousand 
dollars  paid  in  direct  taxes  by  the  mines  themselves, 
so  that  the  iron  ore  which  the  ships  of  the  Lakes  bring 
down  to  Eastern  ports  each  season  pays  almost  half 
of  the  total  expense  of  running  the  State  of  Minnesota ! 

And  these  mines  will  add  more  and  more  to  the 
State  exchequer  each  year,  as  will  also  the  mines  of 
the  three  ranges  in  Michigan  and  Wisconsin.  For  in 
no  part  of  the  world  has  mining  been  undertaken  on 
a  scale  so  gigantic  as  that  of  the  Superior  region,  and 
every  contrivance  known  to  mining  science  is  being 
used  to  increase  month  by  month  the  mountains  of 
ore  which  ever  fail  to  satisfy  the  hungry  furnaces  of 
the  East.  It  is  predicted  by  Captain  Joseph  Sell  wood, 
of  Duluth,  one  of  the  oldest  and  greatest  of  the  iron 
barons,  that  the  time  is  not  distant  when  the  Mesaba 
range  alone  will  be  producing  forty  million  tons  of 
ore  a  year — as  much  as  all  five  ranges  are  producing 
now. 

'*  It  will  cost  over  a  billion  dollars  to  get  this  ore  to 
the  docks,"  said  he.  "And  seven  hundred  and  fifty 
million  dollars  more  to  land  it  in  Lake  Erie  ports." — 
Nearly  a  two-billion-dollar  mining  and  transportation 
business  for  the  people  of  the  Lakes  to  look  forward 
to,  and  this  from  a  single  range! 

"But   will   not   this   tremendous   activity   exhaust 


36  The  Great  Lakes 

your  mines?"  I  asked  of  several  of  these  iron  barons. 
"The  ore  doesn't  go  down  to  China,  and  it  doesn't 
extend  all  over  the  State.     What  is  the  future?" 

The  future !  Few  have  thought  of  this.  There  are 
just  at  present  too  many  millions  of  dollars  in  the 
making  to  give  one  time  or  inclination  to  picture  the 
days  when  only  black  and  silent  scars  will  remain  to 
give  evidence  of  the  time  when  this  Northland  was 
one  of  the  treasure  houses  of  the  earth.  But  that 
time  must  come.  Old  mining  men  say  so  if  you  can 
get  them  to  talk  about  it,  and  scientific  computations, 
as  far  as  they  go,  are  proof  of  it.  These  computations 
differ,  but  they  agree  pretty  generally  that  there  are 
still  between  a  billion  and  a  half  and  two  billion  tons 
of  ore  in  the  Superior  district.  Within  the  next  five 
years  the  ships  will  be  bringing  down  fifty  million 
tons  a  year,  and  there  is  no  reason  for  believing  that 
this  will  be  the  maximum.  So  it  is  obvious  that  the 
ore  of  the  Lake  Superior  regions  will  not  last  beyond 
the  year  1950  unless  new  deposits  are  discovered,  or 
methods  are  found  for  the  utilisation  of  immense  de- 
posits that  cannot  now  be  used. 

"Will  this  event  not  prove  ruinous  to  a  large  extent 
to  shipping  interests?"  I  asked  G.  Ashley  Tomlinson, 
of  Duluth,  and  others  closely  associated  with  iron 
and  vessel  interests.  "To-day  nearly  half  of  the  total 
tonnage  of  the  Lakes  is  from  the  mines.  If  this  in- 
dustry becomes  practically  extinct  what  will  become 
of  the  hundreds  of  ships  engaged  in  the  traffic?" 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Ore  37 

Mr.  Tomlinson's  answer  struck  me  as  extremely 
logical.  "The  production  of  ore  will  probably  reach 
its  maximum  within  the  next  ten  years,"  he  said.  "  It 
will  then  begin  to  decline.  But  the  decrease  will  be 
gradual,  and  meanwhile  other  freight  traffic  on  the 
Lakes  will  be  increasing  so  rapidly  that  each  year 
ships  that  were  intended  originally  for  the  ore  trade 
will  carry  other  business.  There  will  be  no  loss  for 
the  ships.  The  development  of  our  own  and  the  Cana- 
dian West  has  only  begun,  and  the  Lakes  are  the  great 
links  of  commerce  between  their  vast  enterprises  of 
the  future  and  the  East.  The  grain  trade  of  the 
Canadian  West  alone  will  in  the  not  distant  future  be 
something  tremendous." 

But  whatever  the  future  of  the  ore  regions  of  the 
North  may  be,  their  present  is  one  of  great  interest 
and  importance  to  the  world  at  large.  Mining,  like 
shipbuilding,  has  been  reduced  to  a  science  on  the 
Lakes.  A  stranger  visiting  for  the  first  time  any  one 
of  the  five  ranges  is  filled  with  astonishment.  I  will 
never  forget  the  sensations  with  which  I  first  saw 
mining  on  the  Mesaba  range.  We  had  come  up  over 
a  forest-clad  hill  and  stood  on  the  very  edge  of  the  mine 
before  I  had  been  made  aware  of  its  nearness.  Below 
me  there  stretched  a  mile  of  deep,  huge  scars  in  the 
bottom  of  what  seemed  to  be  a  great  hole  dug  into 
the  earth.  One  of  these  pits,  half  a  mile  in  diameter, 
and,  as  I  afterward  discovered,  nearly  two  hundred 
feet  in  depth,  was  almost  at  my  feet. 


38  The  Great  Lakes 

"That's  iron  ore,"  said  my  companion.  "And 
right  there  it  goes  one  hundred  feet  deeper  down." 

This  was  one  of  the  great  " open  pits"  of  the  Mesaba 
range.  There  are  many  others  like  it  in  the  Superior 
regions.  They  are  the  most  wonderful  mines  in  the 
world.  Imagine  that  you  take  a  barrel  of  salt,  dig 
a  hole,  pour  the  salt  into  this  hole,  and  cover  it  with  a 
few  inches  of  earth.  This  gives  you  an  idea  of  one 
of  these  ore  mines.  After  the  earth  has  been  "  stripped ' ' 
from  the  top  the  ore  is  reached  and  it  is  found  in  much 
the  same  way  that  the  salt  would  be  found.  In  the 
words  of  one  superintendent,  it  is  "all  together." 
It  is  as  if  Nature,  like  a  pirate,  had  dug  holes  here  and 
there  in  which  she  had  hidden  her  treasure,  covering 
it  over  for  concealment  with  a  few  feet  of  earth. 

Down  into  these  pits  and  along  their  edges  run  the 
tracks  of  the  ore  cars.  There  is  here  but  little  of  the 
shovelling  and  "picking"  of  men.  Steam  shovels, 
weighing  from  sixty  to  seventy-five  tons  each,  do  the 
work.  Like  a  great  hand  one  of  these  shovels  dips 
down  into  the  soft  mass  of  ore,  buries  its  great  dipper 
until  it  holds  from  four  to  eight  tons,  and  then,  groan- 
ing and  rumbling,  slowly  lifts  its  burden  aloft,  swings 
it  over  a  car,  and  the  actual  work  of  mining  is  done. 
A  thousand  times  a  day  it  will  repeat  this  operation, 
lifting  from  three  thousand  to  eight  thousand  tons 
of  ore.  This  one  shovel  keeps  busy  three  locomotives 
and  as  many  trains  of  dump  cars.  And  there  are 
nearlv  two  hundred  of  these  shovels  in  use  on  the 


pq 


^ 


o 
o 
o 


H 


a, 


10 


CO 


O 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Ore  39 

Mesaba  range  alone.  It  costs  only  about  six  cents 
a  ton  to  mine  in  this  way,  after  the  "stripping"  has 
been  done,  or,  in  other  words,  after  the  ore  has  been 
laid  bare.  There  are  two  other  processes  on  the  ranges 
where  the  ore  is  not  so  soft  or  so  closely  laid.  One 
of  these  is  the  milling  process,  and  the  other  is  the 
blasting  out  of  hard  ore.  Milling  costs  about  thirty- 
five  cents  per  ton,  and  the  blasting  process  from  one 
dollar  to  one  dollar  and  twenty-five  cents. 

Why  it  has  for  some  time  been  impossible  to  build 
ships  too  fast  for  the  demand  may  most  graphically 
be  shown,  perhaps,  by  quoting  a  few  figures  which 
demonstrate  the  tremendous  energy  now  being  exerted 
in  the  ore  regions  of  the  North.  Figures  as  a  usual 
thing  are  uninteresting,  but  these  enter  so  vitally  into 
the  welfare  of  every  American  citizen  that  they  should 
be  regarded  with  more  than  ordinary  respect.  As 
stated  before,  we  are  now  making  nearly  half  of  all 
the  iron  and  steel  produced  on  earth.  In  1880,  we 
made  only  1,240,000  tons  of  steel;  in  1890,  this  had 
increased  to  over  4,000,000;  in  1900,  to  10,188,000  tons, 
and  in  1905,  to  20,023,000  tons.  Lake  ships  and  Lake 
mines  had  to  supply  this.  And  now  we  come  to  mine 
figures  which  almost  stagger  belief.  In  1904,  the 
Mesaba  range,  for  instance,  yielded  only  a  little  over 
12,000,000  tons.  In  the  following  year  the  production 
was  nearly  doubled,  the  ore  carriers  bringing  down 
20,153,699  tons,  which  in  1906  was  increased  to  almost 
24,000,000! 


40  The  Great  Lakes 

This  enormous  annual  tonnage  of  the  Mesaba 
range,  together  with  that  of  the  other  four  ranges  of 
the  Superior  region,  is  carried  by  rail  directly  from  the 
mines  to  the  great  ore  docks  of  Lake  ports.  The 
product  of  the  Mesaba  and  Vermilion  ranges,  in 
Minnesota,  is  shipped  from  Duluth  and  Two  Harbors; 
the  eight  million  tons  of  the  Goebic  and  Marquette 
ranges,  in  Michigan,  from  Escanaba  and  Marquette; 
and  the  five  million  tons  of  the  Menominee  range,  in 
Wisconsin,  from  Ashland  and  Superior. 

To  these  six  ports  of  the  Northland  come  the  vi- 
kings of  the  Lakes  and  their  immense  fleets.  Four 
of  these  ports  are  within  a  radius  of  seventy-five  miles, 
and  the  two  others,  in  Michigan,  are  about  one  hundred 
and  fifty  miles  farther  east  and  south.  No  other  area 
of  lake  or  ocean  in  the  world  is  as  much  travelled  by 
shipping  as  that  along^  which  these  ore  harboiirs  are 
situated.  The  people  of  Duluth  have  witnessed  block- 
ades of  vessels  such  as  have  never  been  seen  in  the 
greatest  ocean  ports.  Over  this  part  of  Superior 
there  is  a  constant  trail  of  smoke  from  the  funnels  of 
ships.  During  one  month  there  were  1221  arrivals 
and  clearances  from  Duluth  alone,  an  average  of  forty 
a  day. 

Behind  these  great  ships,  which  rest  never  a  day 
nor  an  hour  for  eight  months  of  the  year,  are  the  kings 
of  Lake  commerce — such  men  as  J.  C.  Gilchrist,  James 
Davidson,  Captain  Mitchell,  William  Livingstone,  Harry 
Coulby,  W.  C.  Richardson,  A.  B.  Wolvin,  G.  Asliley 


o 

o 


03 

be 

a 
'a 

o 


c 
cy2 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Ore  41 

Tomlinson,  and  scores  of  others.  To  write  of  these 
wotdd  be  to  chronicle  a  history  of  men  who  have  fought 
their  way  to  the  top  through  sheer  force  of  the  "breed 
that  is  in  them." 

Take  G.  Asliley  Tomlinson,  of  Duluth,  for  instance, 
whose  ships  carry  a  couple  of  million  tons  of  ore  a 
year.  "Not  a  great  record,"  as  Mr.  Tomlinson  mod- 
estly says,  but  still  enough  to  supply  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  in  the  United  States  with  a  little 
matter  of  fifty  pounds  each  twelvemonth !  In  a  novel 
Tomlinson  would  make  an  ideal  soldier  of  fortime;  in 
plain,  matter-of-fact  life  he  represents  those  elements 
which  make  the  great  men  of  the  Lakes.  He  is  forty 
years  old.  He  has  sixteen  ships.  His  income  is  over 
one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars  a  year. 

Yet  Tomlinson  began,  as  did  many  other  Great 
Lake  men  of  to-day,  with  just  two  assets — the  clothes 
on  his  back  and  a  huge  ambition.  He  started  his 
career  as  a  messenger  boy  in  the  State  treasurer's  office 
at  Lansing,  Michigan.  But  there  was  not  enough  of 
the  strenuous  life  in  this  for  him,  so  he  went  West  to 
become  a  cowboy.  He  succeeded,  much  to  his  regret ; 
for  soon  after  he  had  mastered  the  broncho  and  could 
handle  a  lasso  there  came  the  war  between  the  cowboys 
and  the  White  River  Utes.  In  one  of  the  fights  Tom- 
linson was  wounded  and  afterward  captured  by  the 
redskins.  During  the  whole  of  one  night  he  was  sub- 
jected to  torture,  and  at  dawn  of  the  following  day, 
when  almost  at  the  point  of  death,  he  was  delivered 


42  The  Great  Lakes 

by  a  party  of  ranchmen.  Tomlinson  was  not  one  to 
display  the  white  feather — but  he  had  had  enough 
of  Western  life,  and  as  soon  as  possible  he  worked  him- 
self from  Rawlins,  Wyoming,  to  Chicago  on  a  cattle 
train.  After  a  time  he  came  to  Michigan,  and  with 
his  savings  attended  the  University  of  Michigan  for 
about  a  year.  This  was  enough  of  "  higher  education  " 
for  him,  so  he  sold  his  text-books  and  went  to  work 
on  the  Detroit  Journal  at  the  munificent  salary  of 
six  dollars  a  week.  Newspaper  work  was  all  right 
until  Buffalo  Bill  came  along.  Tomlinson  joined  the 
show,  rode  a  bucking  broncho  for  a  year,  then  ''de- 
veloped "  a  voice  and  cast  his  fortunes  with  the 
Mapleson  Opera  Company.  In  1889,  he  went  to  New 
York  as  a  reporter  on  the  Sun,  returned  the  following 
year  to  become  night  editor  of  the  Detroit  Tribune, 
and  in  1893  moved  to  Duluth. 

The  Lakes  began  to  hold  a  peculiar  fascination  for 
him.  He  went  into  the  vessel  brokerage  business 
mostly  on  his  nerve ;  but  nerve  made  him  money,  and 
his  capital  began  to  grow.  How  fast  it  has  grown 
during  the  past  dozen  years  one  must  judge  by  his 
ships  and  his  income.  He  is  president  of  five  steam- 
ship companies,  vice-president  of  another,  secretary 
to  three  more,  and  a  director  in  the  American  Ex- 
change Bank,  of  Duluth,  and  the  Cananea  Central 
Copper  Company.  He  has  developed  from  a  t^^pical 
adventurer  of  fortune  into  one  of  the  great  men  of  the 
Lakes.     His  romantic  career  is  described  here  because 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Ore  43 

it  is  illustrative  of  the  fact  that  brain  and  brawn,  not 
"pidl"  and  money,  have  made  the  vikings  and  iron 
barons  of  the  Inland  Seas.  No  millionaires'  sons  here, 
living  on  their  fathers'  prestige — no  blue-blooded 
drones  in  these  regions  of  the  five  little  seas,  where 
only  red  blood  counts! 

-  When  the  first  ships  of  the  season  come  up  from  the 
South  in  April  or  May  nearly  a  million  and  a  half  tons 
of  ore  are  awaiting  them  in  the  docks  of  the  ore-ship- 
ping ports.  There  are  twenty-six  of  these  ore  docks, 
one  of  which,  at  Duluth,  has  a  storage  capacity  of 
ninety-six  thousand  tons.  From  a  distance  these 
docks  look  like  great  trestles,  from  fifty  to  one  hundred 
feet  above  the  water,  some  of  them  running  for  nearly 
half  a  mile  out  into  the  lake.  Out  upon  these  docks 
run  the  cars  from  the  mines.  From  these  cars  the 
ore  is  dropped  into  huge  pockets,  from  which  run 
downward  long  chutes,  or  spouts.  A  ten-thousand- 
ton  carrier  runs  alongside.  Her  hatches  are  opened. 
Into  each  hatch  runs  a  chute.  The  chute  "doors"  are 
opened,  and  with  a  dull,  rumbling,  rushing  sound  the 
ore  pours  down  by  force  of  gravity  from  the  huge 
pockets  above.  At  dock  No.  4,  Duluth,  9277  tons 
were  put  aboard  the  steamer  E.  J.  Earling  in  seventy 
minutes,  being  at  the  rate  of  7988  tons  an  hour.  The 
rapidity  with  which  Lake  transportation  is  carried  on 
is  shown  in  the  fact  that  upon  this  occasion  the  Earling 
was  in  port  only  two  hours  and  fifteen  minutes  before 
she  began  her  thousand-mile  return  trip  eastward. 


44  The  Great  Lakes 

And  now  comes  the  last  important  phase.  One 
viewing  the  continuous  activity  at  the  mines,  the 
building  up  of  cities  on  the  ranges,  and  the  tremendous 
interests  represented  in  the  great  shipping  ports  may 
forget  that  this  is  but  one  end  of  the  gigantic  industry 
which  makes  the  United  States  the  steel-maker  for 
the  world.  At  the  other  end  of  the  fresh- water  high- 
ways is  seen  the  other  half  of  the  picture.  Down  into 
Erie  come  the  ships  from  the  North.  A  few  of  them 
go  to  Chicago,  but  only  a  few.  Out  of  a  total  move- 
ment of  thirty-seven  million  tons,  in  1906,  thirty- 
two  million  tons  were  received  at  Lake  Erie  ports. 
There  are  eleven  of  these  "receiving  ports" — Toledo, 
Sandusky,  Huron,  Lorain,  Cleveland,  Fairport,  Ash- 
tabula, Conneaut,  Erie,  Buffalo,  and  Tonawanda. 

Between  these  cities  there  is  a  constant  battle  for 
prestige.  Now  one  leads  in  tonnage  received,  now 
another.  At  the  present  time  the  bitterest  rivalry 
exists  between  Cleveland,  Ashtabula,  and  Conneaut, 
the  three  greatest  ore  ports  in  the  world.  In  1901, 
Ashtabula  led.  In  1902,  Cleveland  bore  away  the 
"pennant,"  with  Ashtabula  and  Conneaut  second  and 
third.  Cleveland  was  still  ahead  in  1903,  but  in  1904, 
Conneaut  became  the  greatest  ore-receiving  port  in 
the  world.  In  1905,  Ashtabula  had  again  won  the 
ascendency,  and  in  1906,  she  maintained  her  prestige, 
receiving  in  that  year  6,833,352  tons;  Cleveland  was 
second,  and  Conneaut  third.  Lorain,  Fairport,  Ash- 
tabula, Conneaut,  and  Erie  practically  exist  because 


03 


Pm 


Oh 

o 


O 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Ore  45 

of  the  ore  which  comes  down  from  the  northern  mines. 
Seven  million  dollars  are  now  being  expended  in  the 
improvement  of  Ashtabula  harbour  by  the  Lake  Shore 
and  Pennsylvania  railroad  companies,  and  the  capa- 
city of  the  harbour  has  been  doubled  since  1905.  With 
the  improvement  of  that  harbour  Conneaut's  greatest 
advantage  will  be  gone,  for  until  a  comparatively  recent 
date  nearly  all  of  the  largest  vessels  went  to  that  port. 
The  tremendous  activity  in  Ashtabula  must  be  seen 
to  be  fully  appreciated.  In  one  day  lately  almost  four 
thousand  ore  and  coal  cars  were  moved  between  that 
port  and  Youngstown. 

At  this  end  of  the  great  ore  industry  the  wonderful 
mechanism  for  the  handling  of  cargoes  is  even  more 
astonishing  than  that  of  the  Northland.  The  ore 
carrier  is  run  under  a  huge  unloading  machine  which 
thrusts  steel  arms  down  into  the  score  or  more  hatches 
of  the  vessel,  and  without  the  assistance  of  human 
hands  the  cargo  is  emptied  so  quickly  that  the  uniniti- 
ated observer  stands  mute  with  astonishment.  How 
quickly  this  work  is  done  is  shown  in  the  record  of  the 
George  W.  Perkins,  which  discharged  10,346  tons  at 
Conneaut  in  four  hours  and  ten  minutes. 

Once  more,  after  this  unloading,  the  steel  monster 
of  the  Lakes  is  all  but  ready  for  her  long  journey  into 
the  North.  Within  a  few  hours  she  is  reloaded,  with 
a  few  sonorous  blasts  of  her  whistle  she  bids  a  last 
adieu,  and  again  she  is  off  on  the  long  trail  that  leads 
to  the  "ugly  wealth"  in  the  ore  ranges  of  Superior. 


Ill 

What  the  Ships  Carry — Other  Cargoes 

NOT  long  ago  I  went  to  see  William  Livingstone, 
President  of  the  Lake  Carriers'  Association — ■ 
Great  Admiral,  in  a  way,  of  the  world's 
mightiest  fleet  of  steel  —  an  enrolled  navy  of  593 
ships  and  a  tonnage  of  nearly  one  million  nine  hundred 
thousand.  Unconsciously  I  had  come  to  call  this 
man  the  Grey  Man  and  the  Man  who  Knows.  Both 
titles  fit,  as  they  will  tell  you  from  the  twin  Tona- 
wandas  to  Duluth.  For  six  consecutive  years  presi- 
dent of  the  greatest  organisation  of  its  kind  on  earth, 
an  association  of  ships  made  up,  if  weighed,  of  half  of 
the  iron  and  steel  floating  on  the  Inland  Seas,  he  has 
become  a  part  of  Lake  history.  I  sought  him  for  an 
idea.     I  found  it. 

The  Grey  Man  was  at  his  desk  studying  over  the 
expenditure  of  a  matter  of  several  millions  of  dollars 
for  a  new  canal  at  the  "Soo."  He  turned  slowly — 
grey  suit,  grey  tie,  grey  eyes,  grey  beard,  grey  hair 
— all  beautifully  blended.  He  seldom  speaks  first. 
He  is  always  fighting  to  be  courteous,  yet  the  days 

are  ten  hours  too  short  for  him. 

46 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Other  Cargoes      47 

"I  want  a  new  idea,"  I  opened  bluntly.  "I  want 
something  new  in  marine — something  that  will  make 
people  sit  up  and  take  notice,  as  it  were.  Can  you 
help  me?" 

He  swung  slowly  about  in  his  chair  until  his  eyes 
rested  upon  a  picture  on  the  wall.  It  was  a  picture 
of  the  old  days  on  the  Lakes.  My  eyes,  too,  rested 
on  the  old  picture.  It  reminded  me  of  things,  and  I 
kept  pace  with  the  thoughts  that  might  be  his.  I  saw 
him,  more  than  half  a  century  before,  the  stripling 
son  of  a  ship's  carpenter,  swimming  in  the  shadows  of 
the  big  fore- 'n' -afters  that  were  monarchs  before  steam 
came — glorious  days  when  ninety-eight  per  cent,  of 
vessels  carried  sail,  and  sailors  dispensed  law  with 
their  fists  and  bore  dirks  in  their  bootlegs.  Later  I 
saw  the  proud  moment  of  his  first  trip  to  "sea" — 
and  then,  quickly,  I  noted  his  rise:  his  saving  dollar 
by  dollar  until  he  bought  an  interest  in  a  tug,  his 
monopolisation  of  it  later,  his  climb — up — up — 
until 

"I'm  busy,  very  busy!"  he  broke  in  quietly. 
"But  say,  did  you  ever  think  of  this?  Did  you 
ever  build  a  city  of  the  lumber  we  carry  each  year, 
populate  that  city,  feed  it  with  the  grain  we  carry, 
and  warm  it  with  our  coal?  You  can  do  it  on  paper 
and  you  will  be  surprised  at  what  you  find.  It  will 
show  you  more  graphically  than  anything  else  just 
what  the  ships  carry.     Try  it.     You  '11  be  interested." 

I  have  kept  that  idea  warm.     Now  I  am  going  to 


48  The  Great  Lakes 

use  it.  For  probably  in  no  better  way  can  the  im- 
mensity of  the  lumber,  grain,  coal,  flour,  and  package 
freight  traffic  of  the  Great  Lakes  be  given.  Imagine, 
then,  this  "City  of  the  Five  Great  Lakes."  We  will 
build  it,  we  will  people  it,  feed  it,  and  heat  it — and  our 
only  material,  with  the  exception  of  its  inhabitants, 
will  be  the  cargoes  of  the  Lake  carriers  for  a  single 
season.  And  these  carriers?  If  you  should  stand 
at  the  Lime  Kiln  Crossing,  in  the  Detroit  River,  one 
would  pass  you  on  an  average  every  twelve  minutes, 
day  and  night,  during  the  eight  months  of  navigation ; 
and  when  you  saw  their  number  and  size  you  would 
wonder  where  they  could  possibly  get  all  of  their 
cargoes.  The  cargoes  with  which  we  will  deal  in  this 
article  will  be  of  lumber,  grain,  flour  and  coal,  for 
these,  with  iron  ore,  constitute  over  ninety  per  cent, 
of  the  commerce  of  the  Inland  Seas. 

To  build  our  city  we  first  require  lumber.  During 
the  1909  season  of  navigation  about  1,500,000,000 
feet  of  this  material  will  be  carried  by  Lake  ships. 
What  this  means  it  is  hard  to  conceive  until  it  is 
turned  into  houses.  To  build  a  comfortable  eight- 
room  dwelling,  modem  in  every  respect,  requires  about 
20,000  feet  of  lumber,  and  when  we  divide  a  billion 
and  a  half  by  this  figure  we  have  75,000  homes,  capable 
of  accommodating  a  population  of  about  400,000 
people.  With  the  thousands  of  tons  of  building  stone 
transported  by  lake  each  year,  the  millions  of  barrels 
of  cement,  the  cargoes  of  shingles,  sand,  and  brick,  our 


I* 


^lUFORNj^ 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Other  Cargoes      49 

"City  of  the  Lakes"  for  1909  would  be  as  large  as 
Biiffalo,  Cleveland,  or  Detroit. 

But  one  does  not  begin  fully  to  comprehend  the 
significance  of  the  enormous  commerce  of  the  Great 
Lakes,  and  what  it  means  not  only  to  this  country 
but  to  half  of  the  civilised  world,  until  he  begins  to 
figure  how  long  the  grain  which  will  be  carried  by 
ships  during  the  present  year  would  support  this 
imaginary  city  of  400,000  adult  people.  There  will 
pass  through  the  "Soo"  canals  this  year  at  least 
90,000,000  bushels  of  wheat  and  60,000,000  bushels 
of  other  grain,  besides  7,500,000  barrels  of  flour,  all 
of  which  represents  the  "bread  stuff"  that  is  shipped 
from  Lake  Superior  ports  alone.  There  will,  in  addi- 
tion, be  shipped  by  lake  at  least  50,000,000  bushels 
from  Chicago,  Milwaukee,  and  other  ports  whose  east- 
bound  commerce  is  not  reported  at  the  "Soo."  In 
short,  estimating  conservatively  from  the  past  four 
years,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  at  least  200,000,000  bushels 
of  grain  and  11,000,000  barrels  of  flour  will  have  been 
transported  by  the  Great  Lakes  marine  by  the  end  of 
this  year's  season  of  navigation. 

But  what  do  these  figures  mean?  They  seem  top- 
heavy,  un wieldly,  valuable  perhaps  to  the  scientific 
economist,  but  of  small  interest  to  the  ordinary  every- 
day eater  of  bread.  Let  us  reduce  this  grain  to  flour. 
It  takes  from  four  and  a  half  to  five  bushels  of  grain 
for  a  barrel  of  flour  and  dividing  by  the  larger  figure 
our  grain  would  give  us  40,000,000  barrels,   which. 


50  The  Great  Lakes 

plus  the  11,000,000,  would  make  a  total  of  51,000,000 
barrels.  Now  we  come  right  down  to  dinner-table 
facts.  At  least  250  one-pound  loaves  of  bread  can  be 
made  from  each  196-pound  barrel  of  flour,  or  a  total 
of  12,750,000,000  from  the  whole,  which  would  mean 
at  least  five  loaves  for  every  man,  woman,  and  child 
of  the  two  and  one  half  billion  people  who  inhabit  this 
globe!  In  other  words,  figuring  from  the  reports  of 
food  specialists,  the  grain  and  flour  carried  by  the 
ships  of  the  Lakes  for  one  year  would  give  the  total 
population  of  the  earth  a  food  supply  sufficient  to  keep 
it  in  life  and  health  for  a  period  of  two  weeks! 

This  enormous  supply  of  the  staff  of  life  would  give 
each  of  the  400,000  bread-eating  people  in  our  "  City  of 
the  Lakes  "  a  half-pound  a  day  for  one  hundred  and 
seventy-five  years,  or  it  would  supply  a  city  of  the 
size  of  Chicago  with  bread  for  fifty  years!  To  each 
of  the  60,000,000  bread-eaters  in  the  United  States 
it  would  give  212  one-pound  loaves,  or,  with  an  allow- 
ance of  half  a  pound  for  each  person  per  day,  it  would 
feed  the  nation  for  one  year  and  two  months! 

Now,  having  built  our  city,  peopled  it,  and  supplied 
it  with  food,  we  come  to  the  point  of  heating  it.  In 
1907,  there  were  transported  by  Lake  nearly  15,000,000 
tons  of  coal,  and  this  year  another  million  will  probably 
be  added  to  that  figure.  Here  again  mere  figures  fail 
to  teU  the  story.  But  when  we  come  to  divide  this 
coal  among  the  homes  of  a  city  like  Cleveland,  Detroit, 
or  Buffalo,  which  rank  with  our   75,000-home   "City 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Other  Cargoes      51 

of  the  Lakes,"  we  again  come  to  an  easy  understanding. 
Each  of  these  75,000  home-owners  would  receive  as 
his  share  over  213  tons  of  coal,  and  if  he  burned  six 
tons  each  winter-  this  would  last  him  for  thirty-five 
years! 

In  a  nutshell,  there  is  enough  lumber  and  other 
material  carried  by  Lake  ships  each  year  to  build  a 
city  the  size  of  Detroit;  there  is  enough  grain  trans- 
ported to  supply  its  400,000  inhabitants  with  bread- 
stuflfs  for  a  period  of  one  hundred  and  seventy-five 
years,  conceding  the  total  population  of  the  city  to 
be  adults ;  and  enough  coal  is  shipped  from  Erie  ports 
into  the  North  to  heat  the  homes  in  this  city  for 
thirty-five  years! 

When  one  knows  these  facts,  when  perhaps  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life  he  is  brought  to  a  realisation  of 
the  enormous  proportions  of  the  commerce  of  the 
Inland  Seas,  he  may,  and  with  excellent  excuse,  be- 
lieve that  he  has  reached  the  limit  of  its  interest. 
But  as  a  matter  of  fact  he  has  only  begun  to  enter 
upon  its  wonders,  and  the  farther  he  goes  the  more 
he  sees  that  economic  questions  which  have  long  been 
mysteries  to  him  are  being  unravelled  by  the  Great 
Lakes  of  the  vast  country  in  which  he  lives. 

"Because  of  the  ships  of  our  Inland  Seas,"  James 
A.  Calbick,  late  President  of  the  Lumber  Carriers* 
Association,  said  to  me,  "the  people  of  the  United 
States,  from  the  Atlantic  Ocean  to  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains, and  as  far  south  as  Kentucky  and  Tennessee, 


52  The  Great  Lakes 

have  been  able  to  build  the  cheapest  homes  in  the 
world — and  the  best,"  and  this  assertion,  which  can 
be  proved  in  several  different  ways,  brings  us  at  once 
to  the  lumber  traffic  as  it  exists  on  the  Lakes  to-day. 

Going  through  almost  any  one  of  the  Eastern  and 
Central  States  one  will  find  thousands  of  old  sheds 
and  bams,  travelling  the  road  to  ruin  through  age 
alone,  though  built  of  the  best  of  pine  and  oak — 
materials  of  a  quality  which  cannot  be  found  in  the 
best  of  modem  homes  in  this  year  of  1909.  For  ten 
years  past  the  price  of  lumber  has  been  steadily 
climbing,  and  since  1900  the  increase  in  the  cost  of 
building  construction  has  brought  lumber  to  a  par 
with  brick.  While  the  commerce  of  the  Lakes  is 
increasing  by  tremendous  bounds  in  other  ways, 
people  are  now,  perhaps  unknowingly,  witnessing  the 
rapid  extinction  of  one  of  their  oldest  and  most  ro- 
mantic branches  of  traffic — the  lumber  industry;  and 
each  year,  as  this  industry  comes  nearer  and  nearer 
to  its  end,  the  price  of  lumber  climbs  higher  and 
higher,  home-owners  become  fewer  in  comparison 
with  other  years,  and  fleets  and  lumber  companies 
go  out  of  existence  or  direct  their  energies  into  other 
channels. 

To  Lake  people  it  is  pathetic,  this  death  of  the 
lumber  fleets  of  the  Inland  Seas.  An  old  soldier  who 
had  sailed  on  a  lumber  hooker  since  the  days  of  the 
Civil  War  once  said  to  me,  "  They  're  the  Grand  Army 
of  the  Lakes — are  those  old  barges  and  schooners,  and 


^      9 


o 

03 


O  M 


P. 

c 

o 
o 
o 

CO 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Other  Cargoes      53 

they  're  passing  away  as  fast  as  we  old  fellows  of  the 
days  of  '61."  To-day  no  vessels  are  built  along  the 
Lakes  for  the  carrying  of  lumber.  Scores  of  ancient 
"hookers"  and  picturesque  schooners  of  the  romantic 
days  of  old  are  rotting  at  their  moorings,  and  when  a 
great  steel  leviathan  of  ten  thousand  tons  passes  one 
of  these  veterans  the  eyes  of  her  crew  will  follow  it 
until  only  her  canvas  remains  above  the  horizon. 

Yet  from  the  enormous  quantity  of  Itimber  which 
will  be  transported  by  Lake  during  the  present  year, 
one  would  not  guess  that  the  great  fleet  which  will 
carry  it  is  fast  nearing  the  end  of  its  usefulness  in  this 
way.  In  every  lumbering  camp  along  the  Lakes,  in 
the  great  forests  of  Minnesota,  and  in  the  wilderness 
regions  of  Canada,  imprecedented  effort  has  been  ex- 
pended in  securing  "material"  because  of  the  high 
prices  offered,  and  the  result  has  been  something  beyond 
description.  Recently  I  passed  through  the  once  great 
lumbering  regions  of  the  Lakes  to  see  for  myself  what 
I  had  been  told.  Michigan  is  stripped;  the  "forest" 
regions  of  Georgian  Bay  are  scrub  and  underbrush ;  for 
hundreds  of  square  miles  around  Duluth  the  axe  and 
the  saw  have  been  ceaselessly  at  work,  though  there 
is  still  a  great  deal  of  timber  land  in  the  northern 
part  of  the  State.  In  the  vast  lumber  regions  of  a 
decade  ago,  once  lively  and  prosperous  towns  have 
become  almost  depopulated.  Scores  of  lumbering 
camps  are  going  to  rot  and  ruin;  saw-mills  are  aban- 
doned to  the  elements,  and  in  places  where  lumbering 


54  The  Great  Lakes 

is  still  going  on,  timber  is  greedily  accepted  which 
a  few  years  ago  would  have  been  passed  by  as 
practically  worthless.  A  few  years  more  and  the 
picture  of  ruin  will  be  complete.  Then  the  lumber 
traffic  on  the  Great  Lakes  will  virtually  have 
ceased  to  be,  the  old  ships  will  be  gone,  and  past 
forever  will  be  the  picturesque  life  of  the  lumber- 
jack and  those  weather-beaten  old  patriarchs  who, 
since  the  days  of  their  youth,  have  been  "goin'  up 
f'r  cedar  'n'  pine." 

But  even  in  these  last  days  of  the  limiber  industry 
on  the  Lakes  the  figures  are  big  enough  to  create 
astonishment  and  wonder,  and  give  some  idea  of 
what  that  industry  has  been  in  years  past.  Take 
the  Tonawandas,  for  instance — those  two  beautiful 
little  cities  at  the  foot  of  Lake  Erie,  a  few  miles  from 
Buffalo.  Lumber  has  made  these  towns,  as  it  has 
made  scores  of  others  along  the  Lakes.  They  are 
the  greatest  "lumber  towns"  in  the  world,  and  esti- 
mating from  the  business  of  former  years  there  will 
be  carried  to  them  by  ship  in  1909  between  300,000,000 
and  400,000,000  feet  of  lumber.  In  1890,  there 
entered  the  Tonawandas  718,000,000  feet,  which 
shows  how  the  lumber  traffic  has  fallen  during  the 
last  nineteen  years.  It  is  figured  that  about  10,000,000 
feet  of  lumber,  valued  at  $200,000,  is  lost  each  year 
from  aboard  vessels  bound  for  the  "Twin  Cities." 
In  1905,  the  vessels  running  to  the  Tonawandas 
numbered  300;  this  year  their  number  will  not  exceed 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Other  Cargoes      55 

250 — another    proof    of    the    rapidly    failing    Itunber 
supply   along  America's   great   inland   waterways. 

"This  talk  of  a  lumber  famine  is  all  bosh,"  I  was 
informed  with  great  candour  a  short  time  ago.  "  Look 
at  the  great  forests  of  Washington  and  Oregon !  Think 
of  the  almost  limitless  supply  of  timber  in  some  of  the 
Southern  States!  Why,  the  stripping  of  the  Lake 
States  ought  not  to  make  any  difference  at  all!" 

There  are  probably  several  million  people  in  this 
country  of  ours  who  are,  just  at  the  present  moment, 
of  the  above  opinion.  They  have  never  looked  into 
what  I  might  call  the  "economy  of  the  Lakes."  A 
few  words  will  show  what  part  the  Lakes  have  played 
in  the  building  of  millions  of  American  homes.  At  this 
writing  it  cost  $2.50  to  bring  a  thousand  feet  of  lumber 
from  Duluth  to  Detroit  aboard  a  ship.  It  costs  $5.50 
to  bring  that  same  lumber  by  rail !  Conceding  that  this 
year's  billion  and  a  half  feet  of  lumber  will  be  trans- 
ported a  distance  of  seven  hundred  miles,  the  cost  of 
Lake  transportation  for  the  whole  will  be  about  $3,750,- 
000.  The  cost  of  transportation  by  rail  of  this  same 
lumber  would  be  at  least  $7,500,000,  or  as  much  again! 
Now  what  if  you,  my  dear  sir,  who  live  in  New  York, 
had  to  have  the  lumber  for  your  house  carried  fourteen 
hundred  miles  instead  of  seven,  or  three  thousand  miles, 
from  Washington  State?  To-day  your  lumber  can 
be  brought  a  thousand  miles  by  water  for  $3  per  thou- 
sand feet ;  by  rail  it  would  cost  you  $7 !  And  this,  with 
competition  playing  a  tremendous  part  in  the  game. 


56  The  Great  Lakes 

When  lumber  is  gone  from  the  Lake  regions,  will  our 
philanthropic  railroads  carry  this  material  as  cheaply 
as  now,  when  for  eight  months  of  the  year  they  face 
the  bitter  rivalry  of  our  Great  Lakes  marine? 

"  When  the  time  comes  that  there  is  no  more  lumber 
along  the  Lakes,  what  will  be  the  result?"  I  asked 
Mr.  Calbick,  the  late  President  of  the  Lumber  Carriers' 
Association.     He  replied : 

"  Lumber  will  advance  in  price  as  never  before. 
No  longer  will  the  frame  cottage  be  the  sign  of  the 
poor  man's  home ;  no  longer  will  the  brick  mansion  be 
the  manifestation  of  wealth.  It  will  then  cost  much 
more  to  build  a  dwelling  of  wood  than  of  brick  or 
stone.  The  frame  house  will  in  time  become  the  sign 
of  aristocracy  and  means.  It  will  pass  beyond  the 
poor  man's  pocket-book,  and  while  this  poor  man  may 
live  in  a  house  of  brick  it  will  not  be  his  fortune  to  live 
in  a  house  of  wood.  That  is  what  will  happen  when 
the  lumber  industry  ceases  along  the  Great  Lakes." 

Then  this  great  lumberman  went  on  to  say: 

"People  are  beginning  to  see,  and  each  year  they 
will  see  more  plainly,  how  absolutely  idiotic  our  State 
and  National  governments  have  been  in  not  compelling 
forest  preservation.  For  all  the  centuries  to  come 
Michigan,  Wisconsin,  and  Minnesota  should  be  made 
to  supply  the  nation  with  timber.  In  these  three 
Lake  States  there  are  millions  of  acres  of  ideal  forest 
land  which  is  good  for  nothing  else.  Yet  for  at  least 
half  a  century  must  these  millions  of  acres  now  remain 


>> 


'11 

O 
3 


o 


o 
O 


> 

o 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Other  Cargoes      57 

worthless.  Nothing  has  been  left  upon  them.  They 
are  "barrens"  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  and 
before  forests  are  regrown  upon  them  fifty  or  a 
hundred  years  hence,  the  greatest  timber  famine 
the  world  has  ever  seen  will  have  been  upon  us  for 
generations." 

Hardly  could  the  significance  of  the  passing  of  the 
lumber  industry  along  our  Inland  Seas  be  appreciated 
without  taking  a  brief  glance  into  the  past,  to  see 
what  it  has  already  done  for  the  nation.  There  is 
now  practically  no  white  pine  left  in  the  State  of 
Michigan — once  the  home  of  the  greatest  pine  regions 
in  the  whole  world.  Michigan's  tribute  to  the  nation 
has  been  enormous.  For  twenty  years  she  was  the 
leading  lumber-producing  State  of  the  Union.  As 
nearly  as  can  be  estimated,  her  forests  have  yielded 
160,000,000,000  feet  of  pine,  more  than  one  hundred 
times  the  total  amount  of  lumber  that  will  be  trans- 
ported on  the  Lakes  this  year.  These  are  figures 
which  pass  comprehension  until  they  are  translated 
into  more  familiar  terms.  This  enormous  production 
would  build  a  board  walk  five  feet  wide,  two  inches 
thick,  and  three  million  miles  long — a  walk  that  would 
reach  one  himdred  and  twenty  times  around  the  earth 
at  the  equator;  or  it  would  make  a  plank  way  one 
mile  wide  and  two  inches  thick  that  would  stretch 
across  the  continent  from  New  York  to  San  Francisco ! 
In  other  words,  Michigan's  total  contribution  of  pine 
would   build  ten  million  six-room  dwellings   capable 


58  The  Great  Lakes 

of  housing  over  half  the  present  population  of  the 
United  States. 

As  a  consequence  of  this  absolute  spoHation  of  the 
forest  lands,  a  large  part  of  Michigan  is  now  practically 
worthless.  First,  the  lands  were  bought  by  lumbering 
companies;  the  timber  was  stripped — then  came  the 
tax-collector!  But  why  pay  taxes  on  worthless  bar- 
rens, with  only  stumps  and  brush  and  desert  sand  to 
claim?  So  people  forgot  they  owned  them,  and  as  a 
result  one  seventh  of  the  State  of  Michigan  is  to-day 
on  the  deUnquent  tax  list. 

Minnesota  is  going  the  way  of  Michigan.  In  igo6, 
there  was  cut  in  the  Dioluth  district  a  total  of  828,000,- 
000  feet  of  white  pine;  but  each  year  this  production 
will  become  smaller,  until  in  the  not  distant  future 
there  will  be  nothing  for  the  lumber  ships  of  the  Lakes 
to  carry.  What  this  will  mean  to  the  home-builders 
of  the  nation  can  be  shown  in  a  few  words.  Previous 
to  i860,  the  Chicago  man  could  buy  1000  feet  of  the 
best  white  pine  for  $14.  To-day  it  costs  him  $80! 
What  will  it  cost  ten  years  hence? 

Already  the  centre  of  lumber  production  has  swung 
from  the  North  to  the  South.  The  yellow  pine  of 
Louisiana  is  now  taking  the  place  once  filled  by  white 
pine,  and  at  the  rate  it  is  being  cut  another  decade 
will  see  that  State  stripped  as  clean  as  Michigan  now 
is,  and  then  the  country's  last  resort  will  be  to  turn 
to  the  Pacific  coast  with  its  forests  of  Douglas  fir. 
And  still,  as  though  bhndfolded  to  all  sense  and  reason, 


o      c 


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C/2 


i%. 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Other  Cargoes      59 

almost  every  State  government  continues  to  look 
upon  the  fatal  destruction  without  a  thought  for  the 
future,  though  before  us  are  facts  which  show  that 
Americans  are  using  nearly  eight  times  as  much  lumber 
per  capita  as  is  used  in  Europe,  and  that  the  nation 
is  consuming  four  times  as  much  wood  annually  as 
is  produced  by  growth  in  our  forests. 

Ten  years  more  and  the  last  of  the  romantic  old 
lumber  ships  of  the  Inland  Seas  will  have  passed 
away ;  gone  forever  will  be  the  picturesque  life  of  those 
who  have  clung  thus  long  to  the  fate  of  canvas  and 
the  four  winds  of  heaven;  and  with  it,  too,  will  pass 
the  remaining  few  of  those  old  lumber  kings  who 
have  taken  from  Michigan  forests  alone  fifty  per  cent. 
more  wealth  than  has  been  produced  by  all  the  gold 
mines  of  California  since  their  discovery  in  1849. 

But  in  the  place  of  this  passing  industry  is  rapidly 
growing  another,  the  effect  of  which  is  already  being 
felt  over  half  of  the  civilised  world,  and  which  in  a 
very  few  years  from  now  will  be  counted  the  greatest 
and  most  important  commerce  in  existence.  The 
iron  mines  of  the  North  may  become  exhausted,  the 
little  remaining  forest  of  the  Lake  regions  will  fade 
away;  but  the  grain  trade  will  go  on  forever.  Just 
as  the  Superior  mines  have  produced  cheap  iron  and 
steel,  just  as  the  Inland  Seas  have  been  the  means 
of  giving  the  nation  cheap  lumber,  so  will  they  for  all 
time  to  come  supply  unnumbered  millions  with  cheap 
bread.     Like  great  links,  they  connect  the  vast  grain- 


6o  The  Great  Lakes 

producing  West  with  the  millions  of  the  bread-con- 
suming East.  And  not  only  do  they  control  the  grain 
traffic  of  the  United  States.  To-day  western  Canada 
is  spoken  of  as  the  future  "  Bread  Basket  of  the  World," 
and  over  the  Lakes  will  travel  the  bulk  of  its  grain. 
Looking  ahead  for  a  dozen  centuries,  one  cannot  see 
where  there  can  be  a  monopoly  of  grain  transportation, 
either  by  railroad  or  ship.  The  water  highways  are 
every  man's  property;  a  few  thousand  dollars — a  ship 
— and  you  are  your  own  master,  to  go  where  you  please, 
carry  what  you  please,  and  at  any  price  you  please. 
For  all  time,  in  the  carrying  of  grain  from  field  to 
mouth,  the  Great  Lakes  will  prove  themselves  the 
poor  man's  friend.  To  bring  this  poor  man's  bushel 
of  wheat  over  the  one  thousand  miles  from  Duluth  to 
Buffalo  by  Lake  now  costs  only  two  cents. 

And  according  to  the  predictions  of  some  of  the 
oldest  ship-owners  of  the  Lakes,  the  tremendous  saving 
to  the  poor  man  because  of  the  cheapness  of  Lake 
freightage  is  bound  to  increase  in  the  not  distant  future. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  at  the  present  time  ships 
are  not  built  too  fast  for  Lake  demand,  and  as  a  con- 
sequence transportation  rates,  while  exceedingly  low 
when  compared  with  rail  rates,  are  such  as  to  make 
fortunes  each  year  for  the  owners  of  ships.  Take  the 
cargo  of  the  B.  F.  Jones,  for  instance,  delivered  at 
Buffalo  in  October  of  1906.  She  had  on  board  370,273 
bushels  of  wheat  which  she  had  brought  from  Duluth 
at  two  and  three  fourths  cents  a  bushel,  making  her 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Other  Cargoes      6i 

four-day  trip  down  pay  to  the  tune  of  $7500!  The 
preceding  year  one  cargo  of  300,000  bushels  was 
brought  down  for  six  cents  a  bushel,  a  very  extra- 
ordinary exception  to  the  regular  cheap  rate — one 
of  the  exceptions  which  come  during  the  last  week  or 
two  of  navigation.  The  freight  paid  on  this  cargo 
was  $18,000.  In  other  words,  if  this  vessel  had  made 
but  this  one  trip  during  the  season  the  profit  on  the 
total  investment  of  $300,000  represented  by  the  ship 
would  have  been  six  per  cent.  There  are  on  the  Lakes 
vessels  which  pay  from  twenty  to  thirty  per  cent,  a 
year,  and  an  "ordinary  earner"  is  supposed  to  run 
from  ten  to  twenty. 

In  viewing  these  enormous  profits,  however,  the 
layman  has  no  cause  for  complaint,  for  the  vessels 
that  make  them  do  so  not  to  his  cost,  but  from  the 
rapidity  with  which  they  achieve  their  work.  The 
W.  B.  Kerr  is  a  vessel  that  can  carry  400,000  bushels 
of  wheat.  Figure  that  she  makes  twenty  trips  a  sea- 
son. If  she  carried  grain  continually  she  would  trans- 
port a  total  of  8,000,000  bushels  in  a  single  season, 
which  would  supply  Chicago  with  bread  for  nearly  a 
year  and  a  half.  And  it  is  an  interesting  fact,  too, 
that  with  few  exceptions  the  ships  of  the  Lakes  are 
not  owned  by  corporations,  but  by  the  American 
people.  Their  stock  is  held,  not  by  thousands,  but 
by  hundreds  of  thousands.  Recognised  as  among  the 
best  and  safest  investments  in  the  United  States,  they 
are  the  property  of  farmers,  mechanics,  clerks,  and 


62  The  Great  Lakes 

other  small  investors,  as  well  as  of  capitalists.  Re- 
cently one  of  the  largest  shipbuilders  on  the  Lakes 
said  to  me,  "A  third  of  the  farmers  in  the  Lake  coun- 
ties of  Ohio  have  money  invested  in  shipping."  Which 
shows  that  not  only  in  the  way  of  cheap  transporta- 
tion are  the  common  people  of  the  country  profiting 
because  of  the  existence  of  our  Inland  Seas.  It  may 
be  interesting  to  note  at  this  point  that  the  tonnage 
shipped  and  received  at  Ohio  ports  in  1907  exceeded 
that  of  all  the  ports  of  France. 

The  rate  at  which  the  grain  traffic  of  the  Lakes 
is  increasing  is  easily  seen  in  the  figures  of  the  last 
few  years.  In  1905,  over  68,000,000  bushels  of 
wheat  passed  through  the  "Soo"  canals.  In  1906, 
this  increased  to  more  than  84,000,000,  showing  a 
growth  in  one  year  of  16,000,000  bushels,  or  23  per 
cent.  This  rate  of  increase  is  not  only  being  main- 
tained, but  it  is  becoming  larger;  and  the  grain  men 
of  the  Lakes  are  unanimous  in  the  opinion  that  even 
from  the  big  increase  of  recent  years  cannot  be  figured 
the  future  grain  business  of  the  Inland  Seas. 

"  Ten  years  more  will  see  the  American  and  Canadian 
Wests  feeding  the  world,"  a  grain  dealer  tells  me. 
"  Within  that  time  I  look  to  see  the  wheat  production 
of  North  America  not  only  doubled,  but  trebled." 

What  western  Canada  is  destined  to  mean  to  Lake 
commerce  is  already  shown  in  marine  figures.  From 
Port  Arthur  and  Fort  William,  the  "twin  cities"  of 
Thunder  Bay,  were  shipped  in  1907  over  60,000,000 


a 
o 
o 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Other  Cargoes      63 

bushels  of  grain,  and  it  is  safe  to  predict  that  the  ship- 
ment of  these  two  little  cities  will  this  year  exceed 
70,000,000  bushels.  The  largest  elevator  in  the  world, 
with  a  capacity  of  7,500,000  bushels,  has  been  con- 
structed at  Port  Arthur;  and  Fort  William  already 
has  a  capacity  of  13,000,000  bushels. 

And  as  yet  the  fertile  regions  of  western  Canada 
have  hardly  been  touched!  These  70,000,000  bushels 
of  1909  will  represent  part  of  the  production,  not  of 
a  nation,  but  of  a  comparatively  few  pioneers  in  what 
is  destined  to  become  the  greatest  grain-growing 
country  in  the  world — a  country  connected  with  the 
East  and  the  waterways  to  Europe  by  the  Five  Great 
Lakes.  When  the  task  now  under  way  of  widening 
and  deepening  the  Erie  Canal  is  accomplished,  the 
enormous  Lake  traffic  in  grain  may  continue  without 
interruption  to  the  Atlantic  coast.  Even  as  it  is,  the 
transportation  of  grain  from  Buffalo  to  New  York  by 
canal  is  showing  a  phenomenal  increase.  The  value 
of  the  freight  cleared  by  canal  from  Buffalo  in  1907 
was  nearly  $19,000,000,  while  in  1905  it  was  less  than 
$12,000,000. 

Like  the  building  of  ships  the  building  of  elevators 
is  now  one  of  the  chief  occupations  along  the  Lakes. 
The  ''grain  age,"  as  vessel-men  are  already  beginning 
to  call  it,  has  begun.  In  the  four  chief  grain  ports  of 
the  Lakes,  Chicago,  Duluth-Superior,  Buffalo,  and 
Port  Arthur-Fort  William,  there  are  now  145  elevators 
with    a    capacity    of    138,000,000    bushels.     Chicago 


64  The  Great  Lakes 

leads,  with  83  elevators  and  a  capacity  of  63,000,000, 
although  Duluth-Superior  with  their  2  7  elevators  and 
35,000,000-bushel  capacity  shipped  half  again  as  much 
grain  to  Buffalo  in  1907  as  did  Chicago.  Buffalo  is  the 
great  "  receiving  port "  of  the  lower  Lakes.  There  vast 
quantities  of  grain  are  made  into  flour,  and  the  rest 
is  transhipped  eastward.  At  present  the  city  possesses 
28  elevators  with  a  capacity  of  23,000,000  bushels. 

There  is  another  potent  reason  why  the  passing  of 
the  lumber  traffic  and  the  future  exhaustion  of  the 
iron  mines  do  not  trouble  ship  builders  and  owners. 
It  has  been  asserted  that  when  lumber  and  iron  are 
gone  there  will  no  longer  be  business  for  all  of  the 
ships  of  the  Lakes.  How  wrong  this  idea  is  has  been 
shown  by  the  growth  of  the  grain  trade.  But  grain 
will  be  only  one  item  in  the  enormous  commerce  of 
the  future.  Each  year  the  coal  transportation  busi- 
ness is  growing,  and  the  constantly  increasing  saving 
to  coal  consumers  because  of  this  commerce  is  astonish- 
ing. At  one  end  of  the  Lakes  are  the  vast  coal  de- 
posits of  the  East;  at  the  other  is  Duluth,  the  natural 
distributing  point  for  a  multitude  of  inland  coal  mar- 
kets. Of  the  16,000,000  tons  of  coal  to  be  shipped  by 
water  this  year  probably  8,000,000  will  go  to  Duluth, 
and  will  be  carried  a  distance  of  one  thousand  miles 
for  thirty-five  cents  a  ton,  just  about  what  one  would 
pay  to  have  it  shovelled  from  a  waggon  into  his  base- 
ment window!  The  remaining  8,000,000  tons  will  be 
unloaded  at  Chicago,  Milwaukee,  etc. 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Other  Cargoes      65 

One  of  the  most  interesting  sights  to  be  witnessed 
along  the  Lakes  is  the  loading  and  unloading  of  a 
big  cargo  of  coal.  The  W.  B.  Kerr  holds  the  record 
at  this  writing.  She  loaded  12,558  tons  at  Lorain  for 
Duluth,  and  took  on  400  tons  of  fuel  in  addition.  In- 
conceivable as  it  may  seem,  such  a  cargo  under  good 
conditions  can  be  loaded  on  a  ship  in  from  ten  to 
fifteen  hours.  The  vessel  runs  alongside  the  coal 
dock,  her  crew  lifts  anywhere  from  a  dozen  to  twenty 
hatches,  and  the  work  begins.  In  the  yards  are  hund- 
reds of  loaded  cars.  An  engine  quickly  pushes  one 
of  these  up  an  inclined  track  to  a  huge  "lift,"  or  ele- 
vator, to  the  tracks  of  which  the  wheels  of  the  car  are 
automatically  clamped.  Then  the  car,  with  its  forty 
or  fifty  tons  of  coal,  scoots  skyward,  and  when  forty 
feet  above  the  deck  of  the  ship  great  steel  arms  reach 
out  and  turn  it  upside  down.  With  a  thunderous 
roar  the  coal  rushes  into  a  great  chute,  one  end  of 
which  empties  into  a  hatch.     Then  the  car  tips  back,  ^_ 

is  quickly  carried  down  by  the  elevator,  and  is  *'  bumped 
off"  by  another  loaded  car,  which  goes  through  the 
same  operation.  Four  or  five  days  later,  at  the  other 
end  of  the  Lakes,  powerful  arms,  high  in  the  air,  reach 
out  over  the  open  hatches  of  the  same  vessel.  Out 
upon  one  of  these  arms  suddenly  darts  a  huge  "clam- 
shell" bucket;  for  a  moment  it  poises  above  a  hatch, 
then  suddenly  tumbles  downward,  its  huge  mouth 
agape,  and  half  buries  itself  in  the  cargo  of  coal.  As 
it  is  pulled  up,  the  "jaws"  of  the  clam  are  closed,  and 


66 


The  Great  Lakes 


with  it  ascend  several  tons  of  fuel.  Three  or  four 
of  these  clam-shells  may  be  at  work  on  a  vessel 
at  the  same  time,  and  can  unload  10,000  tons  m 
about  two  days.  In  the  days  of  old,  it  would  have 
taken  three  weeks  and  scores  of  men  to  unload  such 

a  cargo. 

"  And  in  looking  into  the  future  we  must  take  another 
item  into  consideration,"  said  President  Livingstone 
to  me.  "And  that  is  package  freight.  It  is  almost 
impossible  to  estimate  the  amount  that  is  carried,  but 
it  is  enormous,  and  has  already  saved  the  country  mil- 
lions in  transportation." 

There  is  one  other  "item"  that  is  carried  in  the 
ships  of  the  Inland  Seas— not  a  very  large  one,  judging 
by  bulk  alone,  but  one  which  shows  that  the  possibilities 
of  romance  are  not  yet  gone  from  modem  commerce. 
Perhaps,  sometime  in  the  not  distant  future,  you  may 
have  the  fortune  to  see  a  Lake  ship  under  way.     She 
is  long,  and  black,  and  ugly,  you  may  say;  she  carries 
neither  guns  nor  fighting  men,  nor  is  she  under  con- 
voy of  a  man-o'-war.     Yet  it  may  be  she  carries  a  richer 
prize  than  any  galleon  that  ever  sailed  the  Spamsh 
Main.     She  is  a  "treasure  ship"  of  the  Inland  Seas, 
bringing  down  copper  from   the  great  Bonanzas  of 
the  North.     The  steamer  Flagg  holds  the  record,  car- 
rying down  as  she  did  in  1906  $1,250,000  worth  of 

metal. 

Once  a  copper  ship  was  lost 

But  I  will  keep  that  story  a  little  longer,  for  it 


O 

O 


CD 

< 


What  the  Ships  Carry — Other  Cargoes      67 

properly  belongs  in  "The  Romance  and  Tragedy  of 
the  Inland  Seas,"  in  which  I  pledge  myself  to  show 
that  the  great  salt  oceans  are  not  the  only  treeless 
and  sandless  wastes  rich  in  mysterious,  romantic,  and 
tragic  happenings. 


IV 

Passenger  Traffic  and  Summer  Life 

IN  a  previous  article  I  have  shown  how  the  saving 
to  the  people  of  the  United  States  by  reason  of 
Great  Lake  freight  transportation  is  more  than 
five  hundred  million  dollars  a  year,  or,  in  other 
words,  an  indirect  "dividend"  to  the  nation  of  six 
dollars  for  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  it.  Yet 
in  describing  how  this  enormous  saving  was  accom- 
plished I  touched  upon  but  one  phase  of  what  I  might 
term  the  "saving  power"  of  the  Lakes.  To  this  must 
be  added  that  dividend  of  millions  of  dollars  which 
indirectly  goes  into  the  pockets  of  the  people  because 
of  the  cheapness  of  water  transportation  and  because 
of  the  extraordinarily  low  cost  at  which  one  may 
enjoy,  both  afloat  and  ashore,  the  summer  life  of  the 
Lakes.  These  two  phases  of  Lake  life  are  among  the 
least  known,  and  have  been  most  neglected. 

At  the  same  time,  considering  the  health  and  pleasure 
as  well  as  the  profit  of  the  nation,  they  are  among  the 
most  important.  To-day  it  is  almost  unknown  outside 
of  Lake  cities  that  one  may  travel  on  the  Inland  Seas 
at  less  cost  per  mile  than  on  any  other  waterway  in 

68 


H 


hJ 


o 


Passenger  Traffic  and  Summer  Life         69 

the  civilised  world,  and  that  the  pleasure-seeker  in 
New  York,  for  instance,  can  travel  a  thousand  miles 
westward,  spend  a  month  along  the  Lakes,  and  return 
to  his  home  no  more  out  of  pocket  than  if  he  had  in- 
dulged in  a  ten-day  or  two-week  holiday  at  some  sea- 
coast  resort  within  a  hundred  miles  of  his  business. 
This  might  be  accepted  with  some  hesitancy  by  many 
were  there  not  convincing  figures  behind  the  state- 
ments, figures  which  show  that  the  Lakes  are  primarily 
the  "poor  man's  pleasure  grounds"  as  well  as  his 
roads  of  travel,  and  that  on  them  he  may  ride  in  com- 
pany with  millionaires  and  dine  with  the  scions  of 
luxury  and  fashion  without  overreaching  himself 
financially.  This  has  been  called  the  democracy  of 
the  Lakes.  And  only  those  who  have  travelled  on 
the  Inland  Seas  or  summered  along  their  shores  know 
what  the  term  really  means.  It  is  a  condition  which 
exists  nowhere  else  in  the  world  on  such  a  large  scale. 
It  means  that  what  President  Roosevelt  describes  as 
"the  ideal  American  life"  has  been  achieved  on  the 
Lakes;  that  the  bank  clerk  is  on  a  level,  both  socially 
and  financially,  for  the  time,  with  the  bank  president, 
with  the  same  opportunities  for  pleasure  and  with  the 
same  luxuries  of  public  travel  within  his  reach.  The 
"multi-millionaire"  who  boards  one  of  the  magnificent 
passenger  steamers  at  Buffalo,  Cleveland,  Detroit,  or 
Chicago,  or  any  other  Lake  port,  has  no  promenade 
decks  set  apart  for  himself  and  others  of  his  class,  as 
on  ocean  vessels;  there  are  no  first-,  second-,  and  third- 


70  The  Great  Lakes 

class  specifications,  no  dining-rooms  for  the  especial 
use  of  aristocrats,  no  privileges  that  they  may  enjoy 
alone.  The  elect  of  fortune  and  fashion  becomes  a 
common  American  as  soon  as  he  touches  a  plank  of 
a  Lake  vessel,  rubs  elbows  with  the  everyday  crowd, 
smokes  his  cigars  in  company  with  travelling  men, 
rural  merchants,  and  clerks,  forgets  himself  in  this 
mingling  with  people  of  red  blood  and  working  hands 
— and  enjoys  himself  in  the  experience.  It  is  a  novel 
adventure  for  the  man  who  has  been  accustomed  to 
the  purchase  of  exclusiveness  and  the  service  of  a 
prince  at  sea,  but  it  quickly  shows  him  what  life 
really  is  along  the  five  great  waterways  that  form  the 
backbone  of  the  commerce  of  the  American  nation. 

This  is  why  the  passenger  traffic  of  the  Inland  Seas 
is  distinctive,  why  it  is  the  absolute  antithesis  of  the 
same  traffic  on  the  oceans.  If  a  $2,000,000  floating 
palace  were  to  be  launched  upon  the  Lakes  to-morrow 
and  its  owners  announced  that  social  and  money  dis- 
tinctions would  be  recognised  on  board,  the  business 
of  that  vessel  would  probably  be  run  at  a  loss  that 
would  mean  ultimate  bankruptcy.  It  is  an  experi- 
ment which  even  the  wealthiest  and  most  powerful 
passenger  corporations  on  the  Lakes  have  not  dared 
to  make,  though  they  have  frequently  discussed  it. 
A  score  of  passenger  traffic  men  have  told  me  this. 
It  is  a  splendid  tribute  to  the  spirit  of  independence 
and  equality  that  exists  on  these  American  waters. 

And  there  is  a  good  reason  for  this  spirit.     In  1907, 


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Passenger  Traffic  and  Summer  Life         71 

sixteen  million  passengers  travelled  on  Lake  vessels 
and  of  these  it  is  estimated  that  less  than  five  hundred 
thousand  were  foreign  tourists  or  pleasure-seekers 
from  large  Eastern  cities.  In  other  words,  over  fifteen 
million  of  these  travellers  were  men  and  women  of 
the  Lake  and  central  Western  States,  where  independ- 
ence and  equality  are  matters  of  habit.  Twelve 
million  were  carried  by  vessels  of  the  Eighth  District, 
which  begins  at  Detroit  and  ends  at  Chicago,  while 
only  three  and  a  half  million  were  carried  in  the  Ninth 
District,  including  all  Lake  ports  east  of  the  Detroit 
River.  From  these  figures  one  may  easily  get  an  idea 
of  the  class  of  people  who  travel  on  the  Lakes,  and 
at  the  same  time  realise  to  what  an  almost  inconceiv- 
able extent  our  Inland  Seas  are  neglected  by  the  people 
of  many  States  within  short  distances  of  them.  As- 
tonishing as  it  may  seem,  nearly  eight  million  passengers 
were  reported  at  Detroit  in  1907 — as  many  as  were 
reported  at  all  other  Lake  ports  combined,  including 
great  cities  like  Buffalo,  Cleveland,  and  Chicago. 
These  millions  were  drawn  almost  entirely  from 
Michigan  and  Ontario,  with  a  small  percentage  coming 
from  Indiana,  Ohio,  and  Kentucky.  Ninety  per 
cent,  of  the  Chicago  traffic  of  two  million  was  from 
Illinois,  Indiana,  and  Wisconsin,  while  of  the  three 
and  a  half  million  carried  east  of  the  Detroit  River, 
from  Erie  and  Ontario  ports,  fully  two  thirds  were 
residents  of  Ohio  and  Pennsylvania.  At  Buffalo, 
which  draws  upon  the  entire  State  of  New  York  and 


72  The  Great  Lakes 

upon  all  States  east  thereof,  there  were  reported  only 
a  million  passengers!  To  sum  up,  figures  gathered 
during  the  year  show  that  fully  ninety  per  cent,  of 
all  travel  on  the  Inland  Seas  is  furnished  by  the  States 
of  Ohio,  Indiana,  Michigan,  Illinois  Wisconsin,  Minne- 
sota, western  New  York,  western  Pennsylvania,  and 
northern  Kentucky. 

Why  is  this?  Why  are  the  most  beautiful  fresh- 
water seas  in  the  whole  world  neglected  by  their  own 
people  ?  Why  is  it  that  from  the  single  city  of  Boston 
there  travel  by  water  two  million  more  people  than 
on  all  of  the  Lakes  combined,  which  number  on  their 
shores  the  second  largest  city  on  the  continent  and 
four  others  well  up  in  the  front  rank?  I  have  asked 
this  question  of  steamship  companies  in  a  dozen  ports 
along  the  Lakes,  and  from  them  all  I  have  received 
practically  the  same  reply.  There  is  a  man  in  Detroit 
who  has  been  in  the  passenger  traffic  business  for 
more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century.  I  refer  to  A.  A. 
Schantz,  general  manager  of  the  largest  passenger 
business  on  the  Lakes.  He  was  managing  boats  at 
the  age  of  twenty,  he  has  studied  the  business  for 
thirty  years,  and  he  hits  the  nail  squarely  on  the  head 
when  he  says:  "It  's  because  people  don't  know  about 
the  Lakes.  For  generations  newspapers  and  maga- 
zines have  talked  ocean  to  them.  They  know  more 
about  Bermuda  and  the  Caribbean  than  they  do 
about  Mackinaw  and  the  three  thousand  islands  of 
Lake  Huron.     The  people  of  three  States  out  of  four 


CTJ 


O 


03 


H 


Passenger  Traffic  and  Summer  Life         73 

are  better  acquainted  with  steamship  fares  to  London 
and  Liverpool  than  to  Duluth  or  Chicago;  they  have 
been  taught  to  look  to  the  oceans  and  ocean  resorts, 
and  to-day  the  five  Great  Lakes  of  America  are  more 
foreign,  so  far  as  knowledge  of  them  is  concerned, 
than  either  the  Atlantic  or  the  Pacific." 

This  is  true.  When  Admiral  Dewey  made  his  tri- 
umphal journey  through  the  Inland  Seas  even  he  found 
himself  constantly  expressing  astonishment  at  what 
he  saw  and  heard.  It  is  so  with  ninety-nine  out  of 
every  hundred  strangers  who  come  to  them.  Think, 
for  instance,  of  travelUng  from  Detroit  to  Buffalo,  a 
distance  of  two  hundred  and  sixty  miles,  for  $1.25! — 
less  than  half  a  cent  a  mile!  I  recently  told  a  Phila- 
delphia man  who  has  been  to  Europe  half  a  dozen 
times  about  this  cheap  travel,  and  he  laughingly  asked, 
"  What  kind  of  tubs  do  you  have  on  the  Lakes  that 
can  afford  to  carry  passengers  at  these  ridiculous 
rates?" 

Well,  there  is  one  particular  "tub"  which  offers 
this  cheap  transportation  once  a  week,  which  cost 
a  little  over  a  million  and  a  quarter  doUars!  Every 
bit  of  woodwork  in  the  parlours,  promenades,  and 
dining-rooms  is  of  Mexican  mahogany.  It  carries 
with  it  a  collection  of  oil  paintings  which  cost 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars.  Every  one  of  four 
hundred  state-rooms  is  equipped  with  a  telephone 
and  there  is  a  telephone  "central,"  so  that  pas- 
sengers may  converse  with  one  another  or  with  the 


74  The  Great  Lakes 

ship's  officers  without  leaving  their  berths.  There 
are  reading-rooms,  and  music-rooms,  and  writing- 
rooms,  magnificently  upholstered  and  furnished;  and 
on  more  than  one  of  these  Lake  palaces  passengers 
may  amuse  themselves  at  shuffle -board,  quoits,  and 
other  games  which  fifty  millions  of  Americans  believe 
are  characteristic  only  of  ocean  craft.  Another  of 
these  "tubs" — ^the  Eastern  States — broke  Lake  re- 
cords in  1907  by  berthing  and  feeding  fifteen  hundred 
people  on  a  single  trip ;  and  the  new  City  of  Cleveland 
will  accommodate  two  thousand  without  crowding. 

Notwithstanding  the  extreme  cheapness  of  their 
rates  of  transportation.  Lake  passenger  vessels  con- 
stantly vie  with  one  another  in  maintaining  a  high 
standard  of  appearance  and  comfort.  This  is  illus- 
trated in  the  interesting  case  of  the  City  of  St.  Ignace, 
which  was  built  a  number  of  years  ago  at  a  cost  of 
$375,000.  Since  that  time,  in  painting,  decorating, 
refurnishing,  etc.,  and  not  including  the  cost  of  broken 
machinery  or  expense  of  crew,  nearly  $500,000  have 
been  spent  in  the  maintenance  of  this  vessel,  a  sum 
considerably  greater  than  her  original  cost.  A  Govern- 
ment law  says  that  thirty  per  cent,  of  the  cost  of  a 
vessel  must  be  expended  in  this  kind  of  maintenance 
before  that  particular  boat  can  change  its  name. 
The  City  of  St.  Ignace  could  have  changed  her  name 
four  times!  And  the  case  of  the  St.  Ignace  is  only 
one  of  many. 

I  have  gone  into  these  facts  with  some  detail  for 


,^:jm 


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In      C 


Passenger  Traffic  and  Summer  Life         75 

the  purpose  of  showing  that  the  extreme  cheapness  of 
travel  and  living  along  the  Lakes  does  not  signify  a  loss 
of  either  comfort  or  luxury.  In  few  words,  it  means 
that  the  Lakes,  as  in  all  other  branches  of  their  indus- 
tries, are  agents  of  tremendous  saving  to  the  nation 
at  large  in  this  one ;  and  that,  were  the  pleasure-seekers 
and  travellers  of  the  country  to  become  better  ac- 
quainted with  them,  the  annual  "dividend"  earned 
in  freight  transportation  would  be  doubled  by  passen- 
ger traffic.  The  figures  of  almost  any  transportation 
line  on  the  Lakes  will  verify  this.  Last  year,  for 
instance ,  one  line  carried  two  hundred  thousand  people 
between  Detroit  and  Cleveland.  The  day  fare  between 
these  points  is  one  dollar,  the  distance  no  miles. 
Estimating  that  four  fifths,  or  one  hundred  and  sixty 
thousand,  of  these  passengers  travelled  by  day,  their 
total  expense  would  be  $160,000.  By  rail  the  distance 
is  167  miles,  and  the  fare  $3.35,  making  a  total  railway 
fare  of  $536,000.  These  figures  show  that  one  pas- 
senger line  alone,  and  between  just  two  cities,  saved 
the  travellers  of  the  country  $376,000  in  1908.  The 
saving  between  other  points  is  in  many  instances  even 
greater.  Once  each  week  one  may  go  by  water  from 
Detroit  to  Buffalo,  or  from  Buffalo  to  Detroit,  a  dis- 
tance of  260  miles,  for  $1.25,  while  the  rail  rate  is  seven 
dollars;  and  at  any  time  during  the  week,  and  on  any 
boat,  the  fare  is  only  $2.50.  These  low  rates  prevail, 
not  only  in  localities,  but  all  over  the  Lakes.  The 
tourist  may  board  a  Mackinaw  boat  at  any  time  in 


76  The  Great  Lakes 

Cleveland,  for  instance,  travel  across  Lake  Erie,  up 
the  Detroit  River,  through  Lake  St.  Clair  and  Lake 
Huron,  and  back  again — a  round  trip  of  nearly  one 
thousand  miles — at  an  expense  of  ten  dollars.  The 
round  trip  from  Detroit  to  Mackinaw,  which  gives  the 
tourist  two  days  and  two  nights  aboard  ship  and  a 
ride  of  six  hundred  miles,  costs  eight  dollars.  The 
rail  fare  is  $ii.  At  a  ticket  expense  of  less  than 
twenty-five  dollars  one  may  spend  a  whole  week  aboard 
a  floating  palace  of  the  Lakes  and  make  a  tour  of  the 
Inland  Seas  that  will  carry  him  over  nearly  three 
thousand  miles  of  waterway,  his  meal  service  at  the 
same  time  being  as  good  and  from  a  third  to  a  half  as 
expensive  as  that  of  a  first-class  hotel  ashore.  Ex- 
cursion rates,  which  one  may  take  advantage  of 
during  the  entire  season,  are  even  less,  frequently 
being  not  more  than  half  as  high  as  those  given  above. 

When  one  becomes  acquainted  with  these  facts  it 
is  easy  for  him  to  understand  the  truth  of  Mr.  Schantz's 
statement  that  "people  don't  know  about  the  Lakes." 
If  they  did,  the  annual  passenger  traffic  on  them 
would  be  thirty  million  instead  of  sixteen;  and,  instead 
of  an  estimated  saving  of  ten  million  dollars  to  the 
people  because  of  Lake  passenger  ships,  the  "divi- 
dend" that  thus  goes  into  their  pockets  would  be 
twice  that  amount. 

Foreign  shipbuilders  as  weU  as  Americans  along  the 
seacoasts  frankly  concede  that  vessel-building  on  the 
Lakes  has  developed  into  a  science  which  is  equalled 


Passenger  Traffic  and  Summer  Life         77 

nowhere  else  in  the  world,  evidence  of  which  I  have 
offered  in  a  former  article.  This  is  true  of  passenger 
ships  as  well  as  of  freighters,  and  the  strongest  proof 
of  this  fact  lies  in  the  almost  inconceivably  small  loss 
of  life  among  travellers  on  the  Lakes.  There  was  a 
time  when  the  marine  tragedies  of  the  Inland  Seas 
were  appalling,  and  if  all  the  ships  lost  upon  them 
were  evenly  distributed  there  would  be  a  sunken  hulk 
every  half-mile  over  the  entire  thousand-mile  water- 
way between  Buffalo  and  Duluth.  But  those  days 
are  gone.  Lake  travel  has  not  only  become  the  cheap- 
est in  the  world,  but  the  safest  as  well.  The  figures 
which  show  this  are  of  tremendous  interest  when  com- 
pared with  other  statistics.  Of  the  sixteen  million 
men,  women,  and  children  who  travelled  on  Lake 
passenger  ships  in  1907,  only  three  were  lost,  or  one 
out  of  every  5,300,000.  Two  of  these  were  accidentally 
drowned,. and  the  third  met  death  by  fire.  The  per- 
centage of  ocean  casualties  is  twelve  times  as  great, 
and  of  the  eight  hundred  million  people  who  travelled 
on  our  railroads  during  1906  approximately  one  out  of 
every  sixty  thousand  was  killed  or  injured. 

To  the  great  majority  of  our  many  millions  of 
people  the  summer  life  of  the  Lakes  is  as  little  known 
as  the  passenger  traffic.  And,  if  possible,  it  offers 
even  greater  inducements,  especially  to  those  who 
wish  to  enjoy  the  pleasures  of  an  ideal  summer  out- 
ing and  who  can  afford  to  spend  but  a  very  small  sum 
of  money.     Notwithstanding  this  fact,  the  shores  and 


78  The  Great  Lakes 

countless  islands  of  the  Great  Lakes  are  taken  ad- 
vantage of  even  less  than  their  low  transportation 
rates.  Only  a  few  of  the  large  and  widely-advertised 
resorts  receive  anything  like  the  patronage  of  sea- 
coast  pleasure  grounds.  If  a  person  in  the  East  or 
West,  for  instance,  plans  to  spend  a  month  somewhere 
along  the  Lakes,  about  the  only  information  that  he 
can  easily  obtain  is  on  points  like  Mackinaw  Island: 
popular  resorts  which  are  ideal  for  the  tourist  who 
wishes  to  pass  most  of  his  time  aboard  ship,  or  who, 
in  stopping  ofif  at  these  more  fashionable  places,  is  not 
especially  worried  about  funds. 

It  is  not  of  such  isolated  places  as  the  great  resorts 
that  I  shall  speak  first.  They  play  their  part,  and  an 
important  one,  in  the  summer  life  of  the  Lakes;  but 
it  is  to  another  phase  of  this  life,  one  which  is  almost 
entirely  unknown,  that  I  wish  to  call  attention.  The 
man  who  does  not  have  to  count  the  contents  of  his 
pocket-book  when  he  leaves  home  will  find  his  holiday 
joys  without  much  trouble.  But  how  about  the  man 
who  works  for  a  small  salary,  and  who  with  his  re- 
stricted means  wishes  to  give  his  wife  and  children  the 
pleasures  of  a  real  vacation?  What  about  the  men 
and  women  and  children  who  look  forward  for  weeks 
and  months,  and  who  plan  and  save  and  economise, 
sometimes  hopelessly,  that  somewhere  they  may  have 
two  weeks  together,  free  from  the  worry  and  care  and 
eternal  grind  of  their  daily  life  ?  It  is  to  such  people 
as  these,    unnumbered  thousands  of  them,  that   the 


Passenger  Traffic  and  Summer  Life         79 

Lakes  should  call  —  and  loudly.  And  it  is  to 
such  as  these  that  I  wish  to  describe  the  astonish- 
ing conditions  which  now  exist  along  thousands 
of  miles  of  our  Great  Lakes  coast  line — conditions 
which,  were  they  generally  known,  would  attract 
many  million  more  people  to  our  Inland  Seas  next 
year  than  will  be  found  there  during  the  present 
summer. 

"But  where  shall  I  go?"  asks  the  man  who  is  plan- 
ning a  vacation,  and  who  may  live  two  or  three  hund- 
red miles  away  from  the  nearest  of  the  Great  Lakes. 
He  is  perplexed,  and  with  good  cause.  He  has  spent 
other  vacations  away  from  home  and  generally  speak- 
ing he  knows  what  a  hold-up  game  ordinary  summer- 
resort  life  is.  But  he  need  not  fear  this  on  the  Lakes. 
All  that  he  has  to  do  in  order  successfully  to  solve 
this  problem  of  "where  to  go"  is  to  get  a  map,  select 
any  little  town  or  village  situated  on  the  fresh- water 
sea  nearest  to  him,  or  three  or  four  of  them,  for  that 
matter,  and  write  to  the  postmasters.  They  can  turn 
the  communications  over  to  some  person  who  will 
interest  himself  to  that  extent.  Say,  for  instance, 
that  you  write  to  the  little  port  of  Vermilion,  on 
Lake  Erie.  Your  reply  will  state  that  "Shattuck's 
Grove  would  be  a  nice  place  for  you  to  spend  your 
holidays;  or  you  may  go  to  Ruggles'  Grove,  half  a 
dozen  miles  up  the  beach;  or  you  can  get  cheap  ac- 
commodations, board  and  room  for  three  or  four  dollars 
a  week  apiece,  at  any  one  of  a  hundred  farmhouses 


8o  The  Great  Lakes 

that  look  right  out  over  the  lake."  In  fact,  it  is  not 
necessary  for  you  to  write  at  all.  When  you  are 
ready  to  leave  on  your  vacation,  when  your  trunk  is 
ready  and  the  wife  and  children  all  aglow  with  eager- 
ness and  expectancy — ^why,  start.  Go  direct  to  any 
one  of  these  little  Lake  towns.  Within  a  day  after 
arriving  there,  or  within  two  days  at  the  most,  you 
will  be  settled.  I  have  passed  nearly  all  of  my  life 
along  the  Lakes,  and  have  travelled  over  every  mile 
of  the  Lake  Erie  shore;  I  have  gone  from  end  to  end 
of  them  all,  and  I  do  not  know  of  a  Lake  town  that 
does  not  possess  in  its  immediate  vicinity  what  is 
locally  known  as  a  "grove."  A  grove,  on  the  Lakes, 
means  a  piece  of  woods  that  the  owner  has  cleared 
of  underbrush,  where  the  children  may  buy  ice-cream 
and  candy,  where  there  are  plenty  of  swings,  boats, 
fishing-tackle,  and  perhaps  a  merry-go-round,  and 
where  the  pleasure-seeker  may  rent  a  tent  at  almost 
no  cost,  buy  his  meals  at  ridiculously  low  prices  and 
live  entirely  on  the  grounds,  or  board  with  some 
farmer  in  the  neighbourhood.  A  "grove,"  in  other 
words,  is  what  might  be  called  a  rural  resort,  a  place 
visited  almost  entirely  by  country  people  and  the 
residents  of  neighbouring  towns,  and  where  one  may 
fish,  swim,  and  enjoy  the  most  glorious  of  all  vacations 
for  no  more  than  it  would  cost  him  to  live  at  home, 
and  frequently  for  less. 

There  are  many  hundreds  of  these  "groves"  along 
the  Lakes,  unknown  to  all  but  those  who  live  near 


>'>nf«*8fS'"-:*  •: ■  "■swwBV 


73 


fh 


^r' 


4-''  G 

Kn  JO 

P  q' 

>  ^ 


^ 


m\ 


be 

tn 

_C 

c 

'^ 

u 

11 

o 

m 

0 

Passenger  Traffic  and  Summer  Life         8i 

them.  Only  on  occasion  of  Sunday-school  picnics  or 
Fourth  of  July  celebrations  are  they  crowded.  They 
are  the  most  ideal  of  all  places  in  which  to  spend  one's 
holidays,  if  rest  and  quiet  recreations  are  what  the 
pleasure-seeker  desires.  And  these  groves  are  easily 
found.  I  do  not  believe  there  is  a  twenty-mile  stretch 
along  Lake  Erie  that  does  not  possess  its  grove,  and 
sometimes  there  are  a  dozen  of  them  within  that  dis- 
tance. I  know  of  many  that  are  not  even  situated 
near  villages,  being  five  or  six  miles  away  and  patron- 
ised almost  entirely  by  farmers.  In  almost  any  one 
of  them  a  family  may  enjoy  camp  life  if  they  wish, 
buy  their  supplies  of  neighbouring  farmers,  do  their 
own  cooking,  rent  a  good  boat  for  from  twenty-five 
to  fifty  cents  a  day,  and  get  other  things  at  a  cor- 
responding cost.  I  am  personally  acquainted  with 
one  family  of  four  who  came  from  Louisville  to  one  of 
these  sylvan  resorts  on  Lake  Huron  last  year,  and 
the  total  expense  of  their  three  weeks'  vacation,  not 
including  railroad  fare,  was  under  fifty  dollars.  The 
experience  of  these  parents  and  their  children  is  not 
an  exception.  It  is  a  common  one  with  those  who 
are  acquainted  with  the  Lakes  and  who  know  how 
to  take  advantage  of  them  to  their  own  profit. 

There  is  another  phase  of  Lake  life,  a  degree  re- 
moved from  that  which  I  have  described,  which  is 
also  unknown  beyond  its  own  local  environment  and 
which  ought  to  be  made  to  be  of  great  profit  and 
pleasure    to    those   seeking   holiday    recreation    along 


82  The  Great  Lakes 

our  Inland  Seas.  The  shores  of  the  Lakes,  from  end 
to  end,  are  literally  dotted  with  what  might  appro- 
priately be  called  lakeside  inns — ^places  located  far 
from  the  dust  and  noise  and  more  fashionable  gaiety 
of  crowded  resorts  and  cities,  where  one  may  enjoy 
all  of  the  simpler  pleasures  of  water-life  for  from  six 
to  eight  dollars  a  week.  -  This  price  includes  room, 
board,  boats,  fishing-tackle,  and  other  accommodations. 
At  most  of  these  places  the  board  is  superior  to  that 
which  one  secures  at  the  large  resorts.  Fish,  frogs' 
legs,  and  chickens  play  an  important  part  in  the  bill 
of  fare,  and  almost  without  exception  they  are  placed 
upon  the  table  in  huge  dishes,  heaped  with  fresh  viands 
from  the  kitchen  as  soon  as  they  become  empty. 
The  fish  cost  the  innkeepers  nothing,  for  they  are 
mostly  caught  by  the  pleasure-seekers  themselves; 
frogs  usually  abound  somewhere  in  the  immediate 
vicinity,  and  where  the  landlord  does  not  raise  his 
own  fowls  they  are  purchased  from  neighbouring  far- 
mers. The  inn  is  a  local  market  for  butter,  eggs, 
celery,  and  vegetables  of  all  kinds,  so  it  is  not  difficult 
to  understand  why  the  board  at  these  places  is  superior 
to  almost  any  that  can  be  found  in  a  city.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  if  these  lakeside  inns  were  generally  known 
they  would  be  so  crowded  that  life  would  not  be  worth 
living  in  them.  But  they  are  not  known  and  as  a 
consequence  are  running  along  in  their  old-fashioned 
way,  sources  of  unrivalled  simimer  joy  to  those  who 
have  been  fortunate  enough  to  discover  them .    At  man y 


^ 


« 


< 


Passenger  Traffic  and  Summer  Life         83 

of  these  inns  only  a  dollar  a  day  is  charged,  all  ac- 
commodations included,  and  the  price  is  seldom  above 
$1.50  a  day,  even  for  transients.  I  know  of  one  inn 
that  has  been  "discovered"  by  half  a  dozen  travelling 
men  and  their  wives.  Three  of  these  families  live  in 
Cleveland,  one  in  Pittsburg,  and  two  in  New  York, 
and  each  year  they  spend  a  month  together  on  Lake 
St.  Clair.  The  cost  is  six  dollars  a  week  for  each  adult ! 
A  few  weeks  ago  I  was  talking  with  one  of  these  men, 
the  representative  of  a  New  York  dry-goods  firm,  and 
he  told  me  that  for  himself,  his  wife,  and  two  children 
it  cost  less  to  stay  a  month  at  this  place  than  it  did  to 
pass  a  single  week  at  an  ocean  resort,  and  that  the 
accommodations  and  opportunities  for  pleasure  were 
greater  there  than  he  had  ever  been  able  to  afford  on 
the  Atlantic.  I  do  not  wish  to  emphasise  the  attrac- 
tions of  any  particular  inn,  for  in  most  ways  all  of 
them  are  alike.  And  the  holiday-seeker  who  knows 
nothing  of  the  Lakes  can  find  them  as  easily  as  he 
can  locate  the  groves  I  have  described.  The  secret 
of  the  whole  thing  is  in  the  knowledge  that  hundreds 
of  such  places  really  exist. 

I  have  often  thought  that  if  it  were  possible  for 
every  person  in  the  United  States  to  make  a  trip  over 
the  Lakes,  beginning  at  Niagara  Falls,  our  Inland 
Seas  from  that  day  on  would  be  recognised  as  the 
greatest  pleasure-grounds  in  the  world.  At  Niagara 
Falls,  the  traveller  takes  the  Gorge  ride,  and  perhaps 
makes  a  trip  on  the  Maid  of  the  Mist.     But  he  is 


84  The  Great  Lakes 

probably  unaware  that  in  the  immediate  neighbourhood 
are  a  score  of  spots  hallowed  in  history,  and  whose 
incidents  have  made  up  some  of  the  most  romantic 
and  tragic  pages  in  the  story  of  our  country.  He 
may  not  know  that  within  walking  distance  of  the 
falls  was  fought  the  battle  of  Queenston  Heights,  that 
at  certain  points  the  earthworks  of  the  British  still 
remain,  that  he  may  stand  in  the  very  spot  where 
General  Brock  fell  dying,  and  that  he  may  follow,  step 
by  step,  that  thrilling  fight  far  up  on  the  summit  of 
those  wild  ridges.  Neither  does  the  ordinary  tourist 
know  that  almost  within  sight  of  the  falls  is  one  of  the 
oldest  cemeteries  in  America,  where  many  of  the 
men  who  were  slain  in  the  battles  of  those  regions 
are  at  rest.  Old  Fort  Niagara  remains  almost  un- 
visited,  and  the  spot  not  far  distant  where  the  ad- 
venturer La  Salle  built  the  Griffin,  the  first  vessel  ever 
to  sail  the  Lakes,  is  virtually  unknown.  Two  weeks, 
and  every  hour  of  them  filled  with  interest,  might 
be  spent  by  the  Lake  tourist  at  Niagara  Falls,  yet  the 
average  person  is  satisfied  with  a  day.  And  it  is  all 
because  he  does  not  know.  This  may  be  said  of  his 
experiences  from  end  to  end  of  the  Lakes. 

When  his  ship  passes  into  Lake  Erie  he  enters  upon 
new  and  even  more  thrilling  pages  of  history.  Near 
Put-in-Bay  his  captain  can  point  out  to  him  where 
Perry  and  his  ships  of  war  engaged  and  whipped  the 
British  fleet  in  1813;  for  nearly  a  hundred  miles  his 
vessel  will  travel  over  the  very  course  taken  by  the 


C/2 


ft 


ft 


m    o  o 


a;  G 


Passenger  Traffic  and  Summer  Life         85 

fleeing  British  ships,  and  that  course,  if  he  follows  it 
to  the  Thames,  will  lead  to  the  scenes  of  the  fierce 
battle  that  was  fought  there,  and  of  the  sanguinary 
conflict  with  the  Indians  in  which  the  famous  chief- 
tain Tecumseh  was  slain.  And  all  this  time  he  will 
see  rising  along  the  white  stretches  of  shore  the  smoke 
of  great  cities,  and  hundreds  of  miles  of  wooded  beach, 
where  unnumbered  millions  might  pass  their  summer 
holidays  without  crowding.  And  when  he  enters  the 
Detroit  River  he  looks  out  upon  quiet  Canadian  shores 
and  little  "Sleepy  Hollow"  towns,  still  characterised 
by  the  quaint  French  atmosphere  and  peacefulness 
that  marked  them  a  century  ago. 

Now  he  begins  to  see  the  crowded,  noisy,  jostling 
pleasures  of  popular  river  resorts;  then  comes  Detroit, 
the  greatest  excursion  city  on  the  Lakes.  Here  again 
history  may  add  to  the  pleasure  of  his  reflections,  for 
three  nations  have  fought  for  and  possessed  Detroit. 
He  passes  Belle  Isle,  the  greatest  pleasure  ground  in 
the  world  with  the  exception  of  Coney  Island,  and  a 
few  minutes  later  can  almost  throw  a  stone  upon  the 
island  that  was  once  the  home  of  the  famous  Indian 
chief  Pontiac,  and  where  the  plans  for  that  blood- 
thirsty warrior's  assaults  upon  the  whites  were  made. 
Then  follows  the  course  across  beautiful  Lake  St. 
Clair,  and  the  slow  journey  through  Little  Venice, 
where  again  the  crowds  and  music  and  gay  vessels  of 
one  of  the  most  popular  resorts  in  America  greet  his 
eyes  for  many  miles;  where  every  bit  of  land  that 


86  The  Great  Lakes 

thrusts  itself  out  of  the  lake  is  lined  with  summer 
cottages  and  lakeside  inns.  Here  the  tourist  may 
stop  for  a  dollar  a  day  or  two  dollars  a  day,  and  may 
mingle  freely  with  bankers  and  merchants  and  mil- 
lionaires as  well  as  with  the  "common  herd."  It  is  a 
mixed,  happy,  cosmopolitan  life. 

From  Little  Venice  the  tourist's  ship  enters  the  St. 
Clair  River,  along  which  live  innumerable  captains  of 
ships.  It  is  a  paradise  of  beauty,  yet  along  its  length 
one  may  buy  cottage  sites  cheaper  than  he  can  pur- 
chase ordinary  city  lots.  Here  the  traveller  will  see 
the  tents  of  happy  campers  from  the  city,  comfortable 
inns,  and  now  and  then  a  summer  resort  hotel — a 
mixed  life,  one  of  pleasure  for  the  man  with  a  family 
and  little  money  as  well  as  for  him  who  has  more 
than  he  knows  well  how  to  spend. 

Once  out  upon  the  bosom  of  Lake  Huron,  the  scenes 
begin  to  change.  Now  there  are  miles  of  shore  on 
which  there  is  hardly  a  habitation  to  be  seen.  From 
Saginaw  Bay  northward  for  hundreds  of  miles  along 
the  Georgian  Bay  and  Michigan  shores,  the  grandeur 
and  beauty  of  the  wilderness  are  seen  from  the  deck 
of  the  vessel.  As  one  progresses  farther  north  the 
scenes  become  wilder  and  wilder,  until  the  captain  may 
tell  you  that  you  are  looking  out  over  regions  where 
the  bear  and  the  deer  and  the  wolf  make  their  homes; 
and  if  you  have  a  drop  of  sportsman's  blood  in  you,  he 
adds  to  your  excitement  by  saying  that  you  may  see 
big  game  from  the  deck  of  the  ship  before  the  trip  is 


o 


< 


o 
a. 


CO 


^*^LXFORN\^ 


Passenger  Traffic  and  Summer  Life         87 

over.  At  times,  and  for  long  distances,  the  vessel 
seems  to  be  picking  her  way  between  innumerable 
islands,  and  if  the  course  is  through  Georgian  Bay 
their  number  bewilders  the  traveller.  They  are  on 
all  sides  of  him.  Here  and  there  upon  them  are  resort 
hotels;  more  numerous  still  are  the  simple,  homelike 
places  where  the  city  worker  and  his  family  may  stay 
at  comparatively  small  expense,  and  along  the  main- 
land are  the  homes  of  settlers  and  farmers,  nine  out 
of  ten  of  whom  are  glad  to  accommodate  summer 
visitors  at  prices  which  make  living  there  as  cheap 
as  at  home. 

Farther  northward  the  tourist's  ship  carries  him 
deeper  into  the  wilderness  country,  through  St.  Mary's 
River,  with  its  forest-clad  shores  and  islands,  broken 
here  and  there  by  little  cottages  built  and  owned  by 
city  people;  through  the  locks  at  the  "  Soo,"  and  into 
Lake  Superior.  Beyond  this,  as  one  captain  expressed 
it  to  the  writer,  "there  is  howling  wilderness  on 
every  shore."  At  times  the  traveller  may  have 
glimpses  of  the  Canadian  coast,  from  which  the 
unbroken  wild  stretches  northward  to  Hudson  Bay; 
his  eyes  may  travel  over  the  hazy  distance  of  the 
greatest  moose-  and  caribou-hunting  country  on  the 
continent;  and  when  near  the  Michigan  shore  he 
may  see  the  smoke  rising  above  the  great  copper 
mines  of  the  Upper  Peninsula.  And  at  the  end  of 
this  northern  route  he  comes  to  Duluth,  the  second 
greatest    freight-shipping    port    in    the     world,    and 


88  The  Great  Lakes 

destined  to  become  one  of  the  most  important 
cities  in  America. 

At  the  Straits  of  Mackinaw,  however,  the  tourist 
may  turn  into  Lake  Michigan  instead  of  continuing 
into  Superior:  and  if  so,  he  soon  comes  within  sight 
of  Beaver  Island,  famous  for  all  ages  in  history  as  the 
one-time  stronghold  of  King  Strang  and  his  Mormons 
— an  island  about  which  piracy  once  flourished  and 
where  more  than  one  vessel,  in  the  years  of  long  ago, 
met  a  mysterious  and  tragic  end  at  the  hands  of  buc- 
caneers as  bloodthirsty  as  any  that  ever  roamed  the 
seas. 

And  so  it  goes,  from  end  to  end  of  the  Lakes,  every 
mile  fraught  with  interest,  every  hour  offering  the 
traveller  something  new  of  scenery  or  history.  At 
no  time  is  there  the  monotonous  sameness  of  ocean 
travel,  and  even  night  is  to  be  regretted  because  of 
the  things  which  are  passed  then  and  cannot  be  seen. 
And  this  life  of  the  Lakes  is  not,  like  that  of  the  salt 
seas,  open  only  to  those  of  means.  It  is  within  the 
poor  man's  reach  as  well  as  the  rich,  is  accessible  to 
the  hard-working  housewife  as  well  as  to  the  woman 
who  possesses  her  carriage  and  her  servants. 


> 

02 


o 
13 


cy2 


V 

The  Romance  and  Tragedy  of  the  Inland  Seas 

I  WAS  watching  a  blockade  of  ships  in  a  Lake  Erie 
harbour — a  score  of  striving,  crowding,  smoking 
monsters  of  the  Inland  Seas,  hung  under  a  pall 
of  black  smoke,  with  screeching  tugs  floundering  here 
and  there,  megaphone  voices  shouting  curses  and 
orders,  and  the  crashing  of  chains  and  steel  filling  the 
air.  And  I  thought  of  a  theatre  I  had  visited  the 
night  before  where,  arriving  late,  I  was  forced  to  crush 
in  with  the  gallery  gods  and  fight  for  a  place  in  the  fifth 
heaven.  In  the  excitement  of  this  "spring  rush"  of 
great  ships  for  the  freight-laden  docks  of  the  North,  I 
spoke  my  sentiment  to  the  man  beside  me — a  man 
who  had  always  before  him  in  his  office  five  miniature 
lakes,  on  which  miniature  vessels  represented  his  steel 
leviathans  of  commerce,  which  he  moved  about,  and 
played,  and  watched,  day  by  day  and  almost  hour  by 
hour,  as  a  player  might  move  his  men  at  chess.  And 
this  man,  I  noticed,  was  regarding  the  scene  before 
him  with  different  eyes  from  mine.  His  face  was  set 
in  a  frown,  his  eyes  stared  in  their  momentary  anxiety, 
and  I  could  almost  feel  the  eager  tenseness  of  his  body. 


90  The  Great  Lakes 

Out  there  in  that  chaotic  tangle,  where  captains  were 
fighting  for  prestige  and  taking  chances  that  might 
cost  thousands,  he  had  ships.  I  saw  him  clench  his 
hand  as  a  black  monster  crept  forward  into  the  gap 
between  two  ships  ahead;  I  saw  it  forge  on,  yard  by 
yard,  saw  the  other  vessels  close  up  on  it  as  though  it 
were  an  egg  which  they  were  bent  on  crushing  between 
them,  heard  the  rumbling  of  steel  side  against  steel 
side,  and  when  at  last  I  witnessed  this  ship  break 
triumphantly  into  the  lead,  great  blotches  of  paint 
scraped  from  it,  I  looked  at  the  man  again,  and  he  was 
smiling. 

Then  he  turned  to  me,  and  as  we  walked  away  from 
the  scene,  he  observed  : 

"That  's  good — that  'crush'  idea  of  yours.  I  'd  use 
it.  It 's  as  pretty  a  comparison  as  you  could  get  to 
the  whole  situation  on  the  Lakes  to-day,  and  it  's  a 
key  to  what  the  situation  is  going  to  be  ten  years 
from  now.  It  's  crush  and  crowd  all  over  the  Lakes 
from  Duluth  to  Buffalo.  Harbours  are  getting  too 
small ;  the  '  Soo  '  canals  are  becoming  outgrown ;  the 
Lime  Kiln  crossing  is  a  greater  and  greater  menace 
as  the  number  of  ships  increases.  And  the  ships? 
They  're  increasing  so  fast  that  unless  the  Government 
takes  a  hand,  there  will  be  more  tragedies  to  write 
down  in  Lake  history  during  the  next  decade  or  two, 
than  in  all  of  the  years  that  have  gone  before." 

This  possibility  of  the  actual  overcrowding  of  the 
Lakes  is  one  that  I  have  discussed  with  half  a  htmdred 


-t-l 
C/2 


c^    55 


o 

Id 

o 
a, 

■Oh 


02 


a, 

<r^        n! 

E 


»>i»VER8(TYl 


Romance  and  Tragedy  of  the  Inland  Seas     91 

captains  and  owners.  It  offers  a  new  "future"  for 
romance  and  tragedy  on  the  Great  Lakes.  Since  the 
day  the  first  strong-hearted  explorers  sailed  up  the 
Inland  Seas  on  the  Griffin,  the  unusual,  the  tragic, 
and  the  romantic  have  made  up  thrilling  chapters  in 
their  history — chapters  in  battle,  piracy,  and  adven- 
ture, whose  heroes  and  their  exploits  rank  on  even 
terms  with  Paul  Jones,  Kidd,  Morgan,  Hudson,  and 
other  worthies  of  the  open  seas.  The  romance  of 
the  old  days,  as  upon  the  ocean,  is  gone ;  a  new  romance 
has  taken  its  place — the  romance  of  iron  and  steel 
and  steam;  and  a  new  and  greater  peril  than  that 
bom  of  wind  and  storm,  many  believe,  is  fast  develop- 
ing to  face  the  fresh- water  mariner  of  the  future. 
This  is  the  peril  of  collision — not  as  it  exists  to-day, 
but  as  it  may  exist  a  few  years  from  now.  Already 
this  peril  is  an  ever-present  menace  upon  the  Great 
Lakes,  and  hardly  a  day  passes  during  the  season  of 
navigation  that  collisions  do  not  occur.  The  Lakes, 
it  is  probable,  will  never  be  able  to  take  entire  care 
of  the  enormous  commerce  of  the  East  and  West, 
and  as  a  result  ships  will  continue  to  increase  until, 
like  the  streets  of  a  great  city  with  their  rushing  auto- 
mobiles and  unceasing  pandemonium  of  cars,  vans, 
and  seething  multitudes,  these  water  highways  will 
become  dangerously  crowded  with  the  vehicles  of 
trade.  Already  the  Lake  Carriers'  Association  seems 
to  foresee  the  danger  of  future  navigation  on  the  Inland 
Seas,  and  has  recommended  that  east  and  west  courses 


92  The  Great  Lakes 

be  established,  so  that  up-bound  vessels  will  be  far 
out  of  the  path  of  down-bound  ships.  This  is  but 
the  first  step  toward  government  legislation,  many 
believe,  that  will  bring  about  the  "cutting  up  of  the 
Lakes  into  roads,"  when  vessels  bound  for  given  ports 
will  have  prescribed  courses  to  travel,  from  which 
they  will  deviate,  unless  with  good  cause,  at  the  risk 
not  only  of  their  safety,  but  of  a  heavy  fine.  Thus, 
it  is  probable,  will  the  Lakes  be  made  navigable  for 
the  myriad  ships  of  the  future,  when,  in  the  words  of 
one  ship-owner,  **  A  pall  of  smoke  will  hover  overhead 
day  and  night  for  seven  months  in  the  year,  and  when 
the  world  will  witness  water  commerce  as  it  has  never 
existed  before,  and  as  it  will  never  exist  elsewhere  on 
the  globe." 

This  is  looking  into  the  future;  but  one  acquainted 
with  the  Lake  life  of  to-day  cannot  but  see  the  picture. 
And  this  picture  brings  one  to  the  real  motif  of  this 
chapter — a  description  of  the  "human  interest  side" 
of  America's  vast  "unsalted  seas,"  that  side  in  which 
the  romantic  and  the  tragic  and  not  the  realities  of 
statistics  and  economic  progress  play  the  absorbing 
parts,  and  which  should  serve  to  make  them  of  interest 
to  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  who  have  yet 
their  first  trips  to  take  upon  them. 

From  my  twenty  years  of  experience  with  them,  I 
believe  that  failure  to  treat  of  the  human  interest 
of  the  Lakes  is  one  of  the  most  inexcusable  omissions 
of  American  literature.     In  the  rush  of  modem  pro- 


Romance  and  Tragedy  of  the  Inland  Seas     93 

gress  the  Lakes  have  been  forgotten — except  in  the 
way  of  their  vital  importance  to  the  commerce  of  the 
nation.  And  each  year  their  picturesque  and  thrill- 
ing aspects  are  becoming  more  deeply  engulfed  in 
considerations  of  profit  and  loss  and  corporation 
finance. 

Not  long  ago  I  asked  a  romantically  inclined  young 
woman,  who  was  about  to  spend  the  savings  of  several 
years  on  an  ocean  trip,  why  she  did  not  take  a  more 
economical,  and  pleasanter,  holiday  by  making  a  tour 
of  the  Lakes.  She  looked  at  me  as  if  I  had  gone  out 
of  my  head. 

"Take  a  trip  on  the  Lakes  when  I  can  have  one  on 
the  ocean!"  she  cried.  After  a  moment  of  continued 
surprise,  she  added:  "I  want  something  that  I  can 
think  about.  I  want  to  go  where  something  has 
happened — where  there  have  been  battles,  and  pirates, 
and  where  there  's  sunken  ships,  and  treasure,  and 
things  under  us!  I  'm  reading  a  story  now  that  tells 
of  the  ocean — The  Cruise  of  a  Lonely  Heart — situated 
in  the  very  part  of  the  sea  we  're  to  cross,  and  I  shall 
read  every  word  of  it  over  again  while  we  're  aboard 
the  ship!" 

That  is  the  great  trouble.  Historians,  novelists, 
and  short-story  writers  have  neglected  the  Lakes. 
I  did  not  waste  my  breath  in  telling  this  young  lady 
that  real  pirates  flourished  in  the  days  of  King  Strang 
and  his  Mormons  on  the  Lakes ;  that  some  of  the  most 
picturesque  "sea  fights"  of  history  were  fought  upon 


94  The  Great  Lakes 

them,  and  that  treasure  untold,  and  mysteries  with- 
out number,  lie  hidden  within  their  depths.  But  I 
am  determined  that  she  shall  read  these  few  pages, 
and  I  pray  that  she,  as  well  as  a  few  thousand  others 
of  my  readers,  may  hereby  be  induced  to  "take  to 
their   history." 

For  centuries  the  oceans  have  been  regarded  as  the 
realm  of  romance  and  mystery.  In  this  age,  the 
youths  of  Chicago,  of  New  York,  Cincinnati,  or  Denver, 
and  even  of  Lake  cities,  search  public  libraries  for 
tales  of  the  South  Seas  and  of  the  great  Pacific;  even 
the  youngster  whose  every  day  has  been  spent  on  the 
shores  of  one  of  the  five  Great  Lakes  seeks  afar  the 
material  that  satisfies  his  boyish  imagination.  And 
so  is  it  with  his  father  and  mother,  his  big  brothers 
and  sisters.  Instead  of  a  glorious  trip  over  the  Lakes, 
they  prefer  the  old  and  oft-made  journey  to  Europe, 
to  the  Bermudas;  instead  of  seeking  out  the  grand 
scenery  and  actual  romance  that  environ  them,  they 
follow  beaten  paths  laid  out  in  books  and  pamphlets 
descriptive  of  the  ocean. 

In  view  of  the  action  already  being  taken  to  bring 
about  legislation  to  prevent  collisions,  it  is  interesting 
to  note  that  no  similar  area  of  any  ocean,  if  suddenly 
robbed  of  its  waters,  would  expose  to  human  eyes 
more  simken  ships,  or  more  valuable  cargoes,  than 
the  Great  Lakes.  During  the  twenty  years  between 
1878  and  1898,  only  one  less  than  6000  vessels  were 
wrecked  on  the  Inland  Seas,  and  1093  ^^  these  were 


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Romance  and  Tragedy  of  the  Inland  Seas     95 

total  losses.  The  loss  of  cargo  during  this  period  of 
a  little  more  than  one  fourth  of  the  years  of  navigation 
on  the  Lakes  was  nearly  $8,000,000,  and  from  this 
it  is  quite  safe  to  figure  that  the  total  amount  of 
property  that  has  gone  to  the  bottom  of  the  Lakes, 
including  only  cargoes,  would  make  a  total  of  at  least 
$15,000,000,  involving  the  wrecking  of  14,000  vessels 
and  the  total  loss  of  over  2000  ships.  Were  these 
"total  losses"  strung  out  in  a  row,  there  would  be  a 
sunken  ship  at  a  distance  of  every  half-mile  over  the 
thousand-mile  length  of  the  Lakes  between  Buffalo 
and  Duluth.  What  a  field  for  romance  here!  What 
material  for  the  seeker  of  human  achievement,  of 
heroism,  of  sacrifice!  Scores  of  these  vessels  disap- 
peared as  suddenly  and  as  mysteriously  as  though  some 
great  power  had  smuggled  them  from  the  face  of  the 
earth,  leaving  naught  behind  to  tell  of  the  tragedies; 
hundreds  of  ships  carried  with  them  valuable  cargoes 
which  remain  to  this  day  for  lucky  fortune-hunters 
to  recover  from  the  depths;  and  in  their  going  thou- 
sands of  lives  were  snuffed  out,  and  thousands  of 
unwritten  acts  of  heroism  were  played  and  never  heard 
of,  or  forgotten. 

How  many  remember  the  name  of  Captain  James 
Jackson  ?  Jackson  is  only  one  of  a  thousand  heroes  of 
the  Inland  Seas,  and  the  deed  which  made  him  famous 
among  Lake  seamen  is  only  one  of  a  thousand  of  a 
similar  kind.  It  happened  one  year  in  the  closing 
days  of  navigation  on  Superior.     The  owners  of  the 


96  The  Great  Lakes 

freighter  W.  F.  Sauber  had  sent  that  ship  from  Duluth 
with  one  last  load  of  iron  ore  under  the  command  of 
W.  E.  Morris.  Off  Whitefish  Point  the  vessel  was 
caught  in  a  fierce  storm  from  the  north.  All  night 
she  weathered  the  gale,  but  with  morning  there  came 
a  blinding  sleet  with  fierce  wind  and  intense  cold,  and 
the  breaking  seas  froze  as  they  touched  the  upper  works 
of  the  ship.  Under  the  increasing  weight  of  ice  the 
disabled  Sauber  gradually  settled.  When  thus  the 
"little  ice  devils"  of  Superior  gather  upon  a  victim, 
it  sometimes  happens  that  no  power  of  man  can  save 
the  ship,  and  in  this  instance  the  crew  of  the  doomed 
freighter  realised  that  it  was  only  a  matter  of  a  short 
time  before  the  end  would  come.  But  strange  things 
happen  on  the  Inland  Seas,  as  on  the  oceans. 

Upon  this  day,  so  far  as  is  known,  there  were  just 
two  vessels  on  Lake  Superior,  and  fate  decreed  that 
they  should  meet  off  Whitefish  Point.  While  the 
men  of  the  Sauber  were  waiting  for  death,  the  steamer 
Yale  was  tearing  her  way  through  the  gale  toward  the 
"  Soo,"  and  as  he  passed  Captain  Jackson  sighted  the 
sinking  ship.  It  was  then  that  occurred  that  act 
which  won  him  a  gold  medal  and  a  purse  contributed 
to  by  hundreds  of  sailors  all  over  the  Lakes. 

Notwithstanding  the  peril  of  his  own  situation.  Cap- 
tain Jackson  brought  his  vessel  to.  For  hours  it  was 
biiffeted  in  the  trough  of  the  sea,  which  was  too  heavy 
for  small  boats  to  attempt  a  rescue  in.  Night  came, 
and  the  freighters  drifted  to  within  a  stone's  throw  of 


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Romance  and  Tragedy  of  the  Inland  Seas     97 

each  other.  At  dawn,  when  the  Yale  might  have  been 
safely  in  port,  it  was  found  that  she,  too,  was  gradu- 
ally settling,  and  that  the  Sauber  could  not  live  an  hour 
longer.  Captain  Jackson  at  once  called  for  volunteers 
willing  to  risk  their  lives  in  an  attempt  at  rescue;  he 
himself  went  out  in  the  first  boat.  If  bravery  was 
ever  rewarded  it  was  then.  Every  member  of  the 
Sauber' s  crew,  with  the  exception  of  the  captain,  was 
carried  to  the  Yale.  At  the  last  moment  Captain 
Morris  attempted  to  lower  himself  into  one  of  the 
boats — hesitated — then  leaped  back  to  the  deck  of  the 
sinking  ship. 

"  Go  on ,  boys ! "  he  shouted  through  the  gale .  ' '  Good 
luck  to  you,  but  I  'm  going  to  stay  with  the  old  boat!" 

This  is  heroism,  sacrifice,  faithfulness,  as  they  are 
bred  on  the  Inland  Seas. 

Thirty  minutes  later  the  Sauber  went  under,  and 
immediately  after  the  explosion  of  her  deck,  caused 
by  the  pressure  of  air  and  water,  those  who  were  still 
courageously  waiting  in  a  small  boat  heard  the  last 
cries  of  Captain  Morris  rising  above  the  gale. 

These  "last  days  of  navigation" — the  season  when 
life  and  property  are  hazarded  by  crews  and  captains 
with  a  recklessness  that  thrills  one's  blood — are  justly 
dreaded,  and  I  have  been  told  by  a  hopeful  few  that 
the  time  is  coming  when  proper  legislation  will  send 
ships  into  winter  quarters  earlier  than  now.  It  is  at 
this  time  that  casualties  multiply  with  alarming 
rapidity,  the  perils  of  Lake  navigation  becoming  ten- 


98  The  Great  Lakes 

fold  as  great  as  those  of  the  ocean.  Heavy  fogs  hide 
the  beacons  that  mark  the  danger  lines.  Blinding 
snowstorms  blot  out  the  most  powerful  lights.  Driven 
by  fierce  gales,  weighted  by  ice,  with  heaven  and  sea 
meeting  in  a  pall  that  conceals  the  guiding  stars 
ashore,  scores  of  vessels  continue  to  beat  onward  in 
the  hope  of  adding  one  more  successful  trip  to  their 
season's  record. 

The  history  of  a  Lake  Superior  tragedy  is  simple. 
One  more  trip  from  Duluth  may  mean  thousands  of 
dollars.  The  season  is  late — too  late.  But  freight 
rates  are  high.  No  risk,  no  gain,  argues  the  ship- 
owner, as  he  sends  his  vessel  from  port.  Those  are 
days  of  anxiety  for  captain,  crew,  and  owner.  In  a  few 
hours  the  clear  sky  may  give  place  to  banks  of  snow 
clouds.  The  air  turns  bitter  cold.  Darkness  falls  in 
the  middle  of  the  afternoon.  The  snow  descends  in 
dense  clouds.  It  is  far  worse  than  the  blackest  night, 
for  it  shuts  out  the  lights  along  the  treacherous  shores 
as  completely  as  a  wall  of  mountains.  Upon  the 
captain  alone  now  depends  the  safety  of  the  ship,  for 
the  Government's  attempts  to  aid  him  are  futile. 
Perhaps  his  vessel  is  safely  making  her  course  miles 
from  the  coast.  Or  it  may  be  that  it  is  driving  steadily 
toward  its  doom  upon  the  dreaded  Pictured  Rocks. 
It  was  in  this  way  that  the  steamer  Superior  was  lost 
with  all  on  board,  and  in  the  same  way  the  Western 
Reserve  beat  herself  to  pieces  within  sight  of  the  Big 
Sable  light.     And  Superior  has  a  harder  fate  in  store 


Romance  and  Tragedy  of  the  Inland  Seas     99 

for  many  of  those  who  take  the  last  ill-fated  trip  of 
the  season.  Sailors  dread  it  more  than  the  tragedy 
of  dense  snowstorms,  when  they  run  upon  the  rocks, 
for  even  there  hope  does  not  die;  they  dread  it  more 
than  the  fierce,  sledge-hammer  wash  of  Erie  in  a 
storm;  more  than  the  fearful  dash  for  port  in  Lake 
Michigan,  where  ports  are  few;  and  this  fate  is  the  fate 
of  "the  little  ice  devils" — those  masses  of  ice  which 
freeze  upon  a  ship  until  she  is  weighted  beyond  control. 
In  these  days  of  late  navigation — days  of  fierce 
battles  with  snow,  ice,  and  wind,  days  of  death  and 
destruction  as  they  are  never  known  upon  the  salt 
seas — is  material  for  a  generation  of  writers;  unnum- 
bered stories  of  true  mystery,  true  romance,  and  true 
tragedy,  which,  if  fed  to  the  nation  in  popular  form, 
would  be  of  immeasurable  value  to  lovers  of  the  liter- 
ature of  adventure.  Into  what  a  fascinating  tale  of 
mystery,  for  example,  might  the  loss  of  the  Queen  of 
the  West  be  turned!  And,  yet,  here  is  a  case  where 
truth  is  in  reality  stranger  than  fiction,  and  possibly 
an  editor  might  "  turn  down  "  the  tale  as  too  improbable. 
Recently  I  chronicled  a  true  romance  of  the  Lakes. 
I  had  dates,  names  of  ships,  names  of  people,  and  even 
court  records  to  prove  the  absolute  verity  of  my  story, 
which  was  related  in  the  form  of  fiction.  I  sent  it  to 
several  editors  who  had  published  other  stories  of 
mine,  and  one  after  another  they  returned  it,  saying 
that  while  my  proofs  were  conclusive,  the  story  was 
so  unusual  in  some  of  its  situations  that  their  readers 


loo  The  Great  Lakes 

would  consider  the  tale  as  a  gross  exaggeration  of  any- 
thing that  might  occur  on  the  Great  Lakes! 

Well,  here  is  the  story  of  the  Queen  of  the  West — 
only  one  of  scores  of  Lake  incidents  equally  unusual; 
and  I  hope  that  it  will  have  at  least  some  weight  in 
showing  that  things  can  occur  on  the  Inland  Seas. 
In  the  late  navigation  days  of  1903,  the  freighter 
Cordurus  left  Duluth  on  a  "last  trip  down."  In 
mid-lake,  the  lookout  reported  a  ship  in  distress,  and 
upon  nearer  approach  the  vessel  was  found  to  be  the 
Queen  of  the  West,  two  miles  out  of  her  course,  and 
sinking.  Captain  McKenzie  immediately  changed  his 
course  that  he  might  go  to  the  rescue,  at  the  same 
time  signalling  the  other  vessel  to  lay  to.  What  was 
his  astonishment  when  he  perceived  the  Queen  of  the 
West  bearing  rapidly  away  from  him,  as  though  her 
captain  and  crew  were  absolutely  oblivious  of  their 
sinking  condition,  as  well  as  of  the  fact  that  assistance 
was  at  hand! 

Now  began  what  was  without  doubt  the  most  unusual 
"chase"  in  marine  history.  Every  eye  on  the  deck 
of  the  Cordurus  could  see  that  the  Queen  of  the  West 
was  sinking — ^that  at  any  moment  she  might  plunge 
beneath  the  sea.  Was  her  captain  mad?  Each  min- 
ute added  to  the  mystery.  The  fleeing  ship  had 
changed  her  course  so  that  she  was  bearing  directly  on 
to  the  north  Superior  shore.  Added  fuel  was  crammed 
under  the  Cordurus  s  boilers;  yard  by  yard,  length  by 
length,  she  gained  upon  the  sinking  vessel.     Excited 


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Romance  and  Tragedy  of  the  Inland  Seas   loi 

figures  were  seen  waving  their  arms  and  signalling 
from  the  Queen  of  the  West's  deck.  But  still  the  ship 
continued  on  her  mysterious  flight.  At  last  Captain 
McKenzie  came  within  hailing  distance.  His  words 
have  passed  down  into  Lake  history: 

"You  're  sinking,  you  idiot!  Why  don't  you  heave 
to?" 

"I  know  it — ^but  I  can't,'"  came  back  the  voice  of 
the  Queen  of  the  West's  captain.  "  We  're  almost  gone 
and  if  we  stop  our  engines  for  a  second  we  '11  go  down 
like  a  chunk  of  lead!" 

Not  stopping  to  consider  the  risk,  Captain  McKenzie 
ran  alongside.  The  Queen  of  the  West's  engines  were 
stopped  and  her  crew  clambered  aboard.  Hardly 
had  the  Cordurus  dropped  safely  away  when  the  doomed 
ship  went  down  Her  momentum  alone  had  kept  her 
from  sinking  sooner. 

One  of  the  most  thrilling  and  interesting  pages  in  the 
history  of  Great  Lakes  navigation,  despite  the  com- 
parative smallness  of  these  fresh- water  seas,  is  made 
up  of  "  mysterious  disappearances."  Ships  have  sailed 
from  one  port  for  another,  and  though  at  no  time, 
perhaps,  were  they  more  than  ten  to  thirty  miles 
from  shore,  they  have  never  been  heard  from  again. 
Of  some  not  even  a  spar  or  a  bit  of  wreckage  has  been 
found.  Only  a  few  years  ago  the  magnificent  pas- 
senger steamer  Chicora  left  St.  Joseph,  Michigan,  for 
Chicago  on  a  stormy  winter  night.  She  was  one  of 
the   finest,   staunchest,   and  best-manned   vessels  on 


I02  The  Great  Lakes 

the  Lakes.  She  sailed  out  into  Lake  Michigan — and 
thence  into  oblivion.  Not  a  soul  escaped  to  tell  the 
story  of  her  end.  Through  the  years  that  have  passed 
no  sign  of  her  has  ever  been  found.  Wreckers  have 
sought  for  her,  people  along  the  shore  have  watched 
for  years;  but  never  a  memento  has  the  lake  given  up 
from  that  day  to  this.  And  this  is  only  one  of  the 
many  mysteries  of  the  Inland  Seas. 

Captains  and  sailors  theorise  and  wonder  to  this 
day  on  the  loss  of  the  Atlanta,  which  went  down  in 
Lake  Superior;  and  wonderful  stories  are  told  of  the. 
disappearance  of  the  Nashua,  the  Gilcher,  and  the 
Hudson,  and  of  the  nameless  vessels  spoken  of  by  old 
Lake  mariners  as  "The  Two  Lost  Tows"  of  Huron. 
The  disappearance  of  these  tows  remains  to  this  day 
unexplained.  During  the  night  the  line  which  held 
them  to  their  freighter  consort  parted  and  unknown 
to  the  steamer  they  fell  behind.  With  the  coming  of 
dawn  search  was  made  for  them,  but  in  vain.  What 
added  to  the  uncanniness  of  the  simultaneous  disap- 
pearance of  the  two  vessels  was  the  fact  that  there  was 
no  storm  at  the  time.  No  trace  of  the  missing  ships 
has  ever  been  found.  Almost  as  mysterious  was  the 
disappearance  of  the  crack  steamer  Alpena  in  Lake 
Michigan.  When  last  seen  she  was  thirty  miles  from 
Chicago.  From  that  day  to  this  no  one  has  been  able 
to  say  what  became  of  her.  Of  the  fifty-seven  people 
who  rode  with  her  that  tragic  night,  not  one  lived  to 
tell  the  tale. 


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TY 


Romance  and  Tragedy  of  the  Inland  Seas   103 

Of  all  Lake  mysteries,  that  of  the  Bannockburn  is 
one  of  the  freshest  in  the  memory.  The  ill-fated  vessel 
left  Duluth  in  the  days  of  the  "ice  devils,"  a  big, 
powerful  freighter  with  a  crew  of  twenty-two  men. 
What  happened  to  her  will  never  be  known.  She 
went  out  one  morning,  was  sighted  the  next  evening 
— and  that  was  the  last.  Not  a  sign  of  her  floated 
ashore,  not  one  of  her  crew  was  found.  For  eighteen 
months  the  ice-cold  waters  of  Lake  Superior  guarded 
their  secret.  Then  one  day  an  oar  was  found  in  the 
driftwood  at  the  edge  of  the  Michigan  wilderness. 
Around  the  oar  was  wrapped  a  piece  of  tarpaulin,  and 
when  this  was  taken  off,  a  number  of  rude  letters  were 
revealed  scraped  into  the  wood — letters  which  spelled 
the  word  B-a-n-n-o-c-k-b-u-r-n.  This  oar  is  all  that 
remains  to-day  to  tell  the  story  of  the  missing  freighter. 
And  now,  by  certain  superstitious  sailors,  the  Ban- 
nockburn is  supposed  to  be  the  Flying  Dutchman  of 
the  Inland  Seas  and  there  are  those  who  will  tell  you 
in  all  earnestness  that  on  icy  nights,  when  the  heaven 
above  and  the  sea  below  were  joined  in  one  black  pall, 
they  have  descried  the  missing  Bannockburn — a  ghostly 
apparition  of  ice,  scudding  through  the  gloom.  And 
this  is  but  one  more  illustration  of  the  fact  that  all 
of  the  romance  in  the  lives  of  men  who  "go  down  to 
the  sea  in  ships"  is  not  confined  to  the  big  oceans. 

Unnumbered  thousands  of  tourists  travel  over  the 
Lakes  to-day  with  hardly  a  conception  of  the  unre- 
vealed  interests  about  them.     What  attracts  them  is 


I04  The  Great  Lakes 

the  beauty  and  freshness  of  the  trip;  when  they  go 
upon  the  ocean  they  wonder,  and  dream,  and  read 
history.  Tragedy  has  its  allurement  for  the  pleasure- 
seeker,  as  well  as  romance;  and  while  certain  phases 
of  tragedy  are  always  regrettable,  it  is  at  least  inter- 
esting to  be  able  at  times  to  recall  them.  The  Lake 
traveller,  for  instance,  would  feel  that  his  trip  had 
more  fully  repaid  him  if  his  captain  should  say,  point- 
ing to  a  certain  spot,  "There  is  where  Perry  and  his 
log  ships  of  war  met  the  British:  the  battle  was  fought 
right  here";  or,  "There  is  where  the  Lady  Elgin  went 
down,  with  a  loss  of  three  hundred  lives." 

Three  hundred  lives !  The  ordinary  modem  tourist 
would  hold  up  his  hands  in  incredulous  wonder.  "Is 
it  possible,"  he  might  ask,  "that  such  tragedies  have 
occurred  on  the  Lakes?"  I  doubt  if  there  are  many 
who  know  that  upon  the  Lakes  have  occurred  some  of 
the  greatest  marine  disasters  of  the  world.  On  Sep- 
tember 8,.  i860,  the  Lady  Elgin  collided  with  the 
schooner  Augusta  and  went  down  in  Lake  Michigan, 
carrying  with  her  three  hundred  men,  women,  and 
children,  most  of  whom  were  excursionists  from  Mil- 
waukee. Two  months  later  the  propeller  Dacotah 
sank  in  a  terrific  gale  off  Sturgeon  Point,  Lake  Erie, 
carrying  every  soul  down  with  her.  Nothing  but 
fragments  were  ever  seen  afterward,  so  complete  was 
her  destruction.  On  the  steamer  Ironsides,  which 
dove  down  into  one  hundred  and  twenty  feet  of  water, 
twenty-four  lives   were   lost   in   full   sight   of   Grand 


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Romance  and  Tragedy  of  the  Inland  Seas   105 

Haven.  Many  vessels,  like  the  Ironsides,  have  per- 
ished with  their  bows  almost  in  harbour.  Less  than 
four  years  ago,  for  instance,  the  big  steel  ship  Ma- 
taafa  was  beaten  to  pieces  on  the  Duluth  breakwater, 
while  not  more  than  thirty  or  forty  rods  away  thou- 
sands of  people  stood  helpless,  watching  the  death- 
struggles  of  her  crew,  who  were  absolutely  helpless 
in  the  tremendous  seas,  and  who  died  within  shouting 
distance  of  their  friends. 

Probably  the  most  terrible  disaster  that  ever  oc- 
curred on  the  Lakes  was  the  burning  of  the  steamer 
G.  P.  Griffin,  twenty  miles  east  of  Cleveland.  The 
vessel  was  only  three  miles  from  shore  when  the  flames 
were  discovered,  and  her  captain  at  once  made  an 
effort  to  run  her  aground.  Half  a  mile  from  the  main- 
land the  Griffin  struck  a  sand-bar  and  immediately 
there  followed  one  of  the  most  terrible  scenes  in  the 
annals  of  marine  tragedy.  The  boats  were  lowered 
and  swamped  by  the  maddened  crowd.  Men  became 
beasts,  and  fought  back  women  and  children.  Fren- 
zied mothers  leaped  overboard  with  their  babes  in 
their  arms.  Scorched  by  the  flames,  their  faces  black- 
ened, their  eyes  bulging,  and  even  their  garments  on 
fire,  over  three  hundred  people  fought  for  their  lives. 
Men  seized  their  wives  and  flung  them  overboard, 
leaping  after  them  to  destruction ;  human  beings  fought 
like  demons  for  possession  of  chairs,  boards,  or  any 
objects  that  might  support  them  in  the  water,  and 
others,    crazed   by   the   terrible   scenes   about   them, 


io6  The  Great  Lakes 

dashed  into  the  roaring  flames,  their  dying  shrieks 
mingling  with  the  hopeless  cries  of  those  who  still 
struggled  for  life.  From  the  shore  scores  of  helpless 
peopls,  without  boats,  or  any  means  of  assistance, 
watched  the  frightful  spectacle,  and  strong  swimmers 
struck  out  to  give  what  aid  they  could.  Only  a  few 
were  saved.  For  days  scorched  and  unrecognisable 
corpses  floated  ashore,  and  when  the  final  death-roll 
was  called,  it  was  found  that  286  lives  had  gone  out 
in  that  frightful  hour  of  fire. 

Is  there  a  more  tragic  page  in  the  history  of  an}^ 
ocean  than  this? — a  page  to  which  must  still  be  added 
the  burning  of  the  steamer  Erie,  with  a  loss  of  one 
hundred  and  seventy  lives,  the  sinking  of  the  Pewahic 
with  seventy  souls  off  Thunder  Bay  Light,  in  Lake 
Huron,  the  loss  of  the  Asia  with  one  hundred  lives, 
and  scores  of  other  tragedies  that  might  be  men- 
tioned. The  Inland  Seas  have  borne  a  burden  of  loss 
greater  in  proportion  than  that  of  any  of  the  salt 
oceans.  Their  bottoms  are  literally  strewn  with  the 
bones  of  ships  and  men,  their  very  existence  is  one  of 
tragedy  coupled  with  the  greatest  industrial  progress 
the  world  has  ever  seen.  But  there  are  no  books 
descriptive  of  their  "attractions,"  no  volumes  of 
fiction  or  history  descriptive  of  those  "thrilling  human 
elements"  that  tend  to  draw  people  from  the  utter- 
most ends  of  the  earth.  This  field  yet  remains  for 
the  writers  of  to-day. 

And  romance  walks  hand  in  hand  with  tragedy  on 


Romance  and  Tragedy  of  the  Inland  Seas   107 

the  Inland  Seas.  For  two  or  three  years  past  a  new 
epidemic  has  been  sweeping  the  world,  an  epidemic 
which  has  attracted  attention  in  every  civilised  land 
and  to  which  I  might  give  the  name  "  treasuritis " — 
the  golden  ignis  fatuus  of  hidden  treasure  which  is 
luring  men  to  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  which  is 
bringing  about  the  expenditure  of  fortunes  in  the 
search  for  other  fortunes  lost  on  land  or  at  sea.  While 
South  Sea  treasure-hunts  have  been  exploited  by 
newspapers  and  magazines,  while  Cocos  Island  and 
the  golden  Pacific  have  overworked  the  imaginations 
of  thousands,  few  have  heard  of  the  treasure-hunts  and 
lost  fortunes  of  the  Lakes.  So  businesslike  are  these 
ventures  of  the  Inland  Seas  regarded  by  those  who 
make  them,  that  little  of  romance  or  adventure  is 
seen  in  them. 

How  treasures  are  lost,  and  sometimes  found,  in 
the  depths  of  the  Great  Lakes  is  illustrated  in  the 
tragic  story  of  the  Erie.  This  vessel,  under  command 
of  Captain  T.  J.  Titus,  left  Buffalo  for  Chicago  on  the 
afternoon  of  August  9,  1841.  When  thirty-three  miles 
out,  off  Silver  Creek,  a  slight  explosion  was  heard  and 
almost  immediately  the  ship  was  enveloped  in  flames. 
In  the  excitement  of  the  appalling  loss  of  life  that  fol- 
lowed, no  thought  was  given  to  a  treasure  of  $180,000 
that  went' down  with  her — the  life  savings  of  scores 
of  immigrants  bound  for  the  West.  For  many  years 
the  Erie  lay  hidden  in  the  sands,  seventy  feet  under 
water.     In  1855,  a  treasure-seeking  party  left  Buffalo, 


io8  The  Great  Lakes 

discovered  the  hull,  towed  it  into  shallow  water,  and 
recovered  a  fortune,  mostly  in  foreign  money. 

Not  very  long  ago  a  treasure-ship  came  down  from 
the  North — the  William H.  Stevens,  loaded  with  $ioi,- 
880  worth  of  copper.  Somewhere  between  Conneaut, 
Ohio,  and  Port  Burwell,  Ontario,  she  caught  fire  and 
sank.  For  a  long  time  unavailing  efforts  were  made 
to  recover  her  treasure.  Then  Captain  Harris  W. 
Baker,  of  Detroit,  fitted  out  a  modem  treasure-hunting 
expedition  that  was  as  successful  in  every  way  as  the 
most  romantic  youngster  in  the  land  could  wish,  for 
he  recovered  nearly  $100,000  worth  of  the  Stevens's 
cargo,  his  own  salvage  share  being  $50,000. 

While  there  have  been  many  fortunes  recovered 
from  the  bottoms  of  the  Lakes,  there  are  many  others 
that  still  defy  discovery.  Somewhere  along  the  south 
shore  of  Lake  Erie,  between  Dunkirk  and  Erie,  lies  a 
treasure-ship  which  will  bring  a  fortune  to  her  lucky 
discoverer,  if  she  is  ever  found.  One  night  the  Dean- 
Richmond,  with  $50,000  worth  of  pig  zinc  on  board, 
mysteriously  disappeared  between  those  two  places. 
All  hands  were  lost  and  their  bodies  were  washed 
ashore.  In  vain  have  search  parties  sought  the  lost 
vessel.  The  last  attempt  was  made  by  the  Murphy 
Wrecking  Company,  of  Buffalo,  which  put  a  vessel 
and  several  divers  on  the  job  for  the  greater  part  of 
a  season.  In  the  deep  water  of  Saginaw  Bay  lies 
the  steamship  Fay,  with  $20,000  worth  of  steel  billets 
in  her  hold;  and  somewhere  near  Walnut  Creek,  in 


The  Steamer  "Wahcondah. 


One  of  the  Lake  grain  carriers  Avhich  was  caught  in  a  storm 

late  in  the  season  after  being  buffeted  by  the  waves  of 

Lake  Superior  for  about  fourteen  hours. 


•P  THE 

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^         OF 


Romance  and  Tragedy  of  the  Inland  Seas  109 

Lake  Erie,  is  the  Young  Sion,  with  a  valuable  cargo 
of  railroad  iron.  Off  Point  Pelee  is  the  Kent,  with  a 
treasure  in  money  in  her  hulk  and  the  skeletons  of 
eight  human  beings  in  her  cabins;  and  somewhere 
between  Cleveland  and  the  Detroit  River  is  a  cargo  of 
locomotives,  lost  with  the  Clarion.  In  Lake  Huron, 
near  Saginaw  Bay,  are  more  lost  ships  than  in  any 
other  part  of  the  Great  Lakes,  and  for  this  reason 
Huron  has  frequently  been  called  the  "  Lake  of  Sunken 
Treasure."  In  the  days  when  the  country  along  the 
Bay  was  filled  with  lumber-camps,  large  sums  of  money 
were  brought  up  in  small  vessels,  and  many  of  these 
vessels  were  lost  in  the  sudden  tempests  and  fearful 
seas  which  beset  this  part  of  Huron.  Beside  these 
treasure  lumber  barges,  it  is  believed  that  the  City  of 
Detroit,  with  a  $50,000  treasure  in  copper,  lies  some- 
where in  Saginaw  Bay.  The  R.  G.  Coburn,  also  laden 
with  copper,  sank  there  in  187 1,  with  a  loss  of  thirty 
lives.  Although  searches  have  been  made  for  her, 
the  location  of  the  vessel  is  still  one  of  the  unsolved 
mysteries  of  the  Lakes. 

That  treasure-hunting  is  not  without  its  romance,  as 
well  as  its  reward,  is  shown  by  the  case  of  the  Pewabic. 
This  vessel,  with  her  treasure  in  copper,  disappeared  as 
completely  as  though  she  had  been  lifted  above  the 
clouds.  Expedition  after  expedition  was  fitted  out 
to  search  for  her — a  search  which  continued  over  a 
period  of  thirty  years.  In  1897,  a  party  of  fortune- 
seekers  from  Milwaukee  succeeded  in  finding  the  long- 


no  The  Great  Lakes 

lost  ship  six  miles  south-east  of  Thunder  Bay.  Another 
terrible  event  was  the  loss  of  the  steamer  Atlantic,  off 
Long  Point,  Lake  Erie,  with  three  hundred  lives. 
For  many  years,  futile  search  was  made  for  her;  not 
till  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  was  she  found,  and 
$30,000  recovered. 

Whisky  and  coal  form  quite  an  important  part  of  the 
treasure  which  awaits  recovery  in  the  Inland  Seas. 
Many  vessels  with  cargoes  of  whisky  have  been  lost, 
and  this  liquor  would  be  as  good  to-day  as  when  it 
went  down.  In  1846,  the  Lexington,  Captain  Peer, 
cleared  from  Cleveland  for  Port  Huron,  freighted  with 
one  hundred  and  ten  barrels  of  whisky.  In  mid-lake, 
the  vessel  foundered  with  all  on  board,  and  though 
more  than  sixty  years  have  passed,  she  has  never 
been  found.  To-day  her  cargo  would  be  worth  $115 
a  barrel.  The  Anthony  Wayne  also  sank  in  Lake  Erie 
with  three  hundred  barrels  of  whisky  and  of  wine ;  and 
five  years  afterwards,  the  Westmoreland  sank  near 
Manitou  Island  with  a  similar  cargo.  These  are  only 
a  few  of  many  such  cargoes  now  at  the  bottom  of  the 
Lakes.  Of  treasure  in  lost  coal,  that  of  the  Gilcher 
and  Ostrich,  steamer  and  tow,  that  disappeared  in 
Lake  Michigan,  is  one  of  the  largest.  The  two  vessels 
carried  three  thousand  tons,  and  as  yet  they  have  not 
been  traced  to  their  resting  place .  In  1 8  9  5 ,  the  steamer 
Africa  went  down  in  a  gale  on  Lake  Huron,  carrying 
two  thousand  tons  of  coal  with  her,  and  at  the  bottom 
of  Lake  Ontario  is  the  ship  St.  Peter,  with  a  big  cargo 


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Romance  and  Tragedy  of  the  Inland  Seas   m 

of  fuel.  It  is  estimated  that  at  least  half  a  million 
dollars  in  coal  awaits  recovery  at  the  bottom  of  the 
Lakes. 

But,  after  all,  perhaps  the  most  romantic  of  all 
disappearances  on  the  Inland  Seas  is  that  of  the 
Grijfin,  built  by  La  Salle  at  the  foot  of  Lake  Erie,  in 
January,  1679.  The  Griffin  sailed  across  Lake  Erie, 
up  the  Detroit  River,  and  continued  until  she  entered 
Lake  Michigan.  In  the  autumn  of  1680,  she  started 
on  her  return  trip,  laden  with  furs  and  with  $12,000 
in  gold.  She  was  never  heard  of  again,  and  historians 
are  generally  of  the  opinion  that  the  little  vessel  sank 
during  a  storm  on  Lake  Huron. 

Or  it  may  be  that  one  must  choose  between  this 
earliest  voyager  of  the  Lakes  and  that  other  shrouded 
mystery — the  "Frozen  Ship."  Lake  Superior  has 
been  the  scene  of  as  weird  happenings  as  any  tropic 
sea,  and  this  of  the  Frozen  Ship,  perhaps,  is  the  weirdest 
of  all.  She  was  a  schooner,  with  towering  masts,  of 
the  days  when  canvas  was  monarch  of  the  seas;  and 
the  captain  was  her  owner,  who  set  out  one  day  in 
late  November  for  a  more  southern  port  than  Duluth. 
And  then  came  the  Great  Storm — ^that  storm  which 
comes  once  each  year  in  the  days  of  late  navigation 
to  add  to  the  lists  of  ships  and  men  lost  and  dead — 
and  just  what  happened  to  the  schooner  no  living  man 
can  say.  But  one  day,  many  weeks  afterward,  the 
corpse  of  a  ship  was  found  on  the  edge  of  the  pine 
wilderness  on  the  north   Superior   shore;  and   around 


112  The  Great  Lakes 

and  above  this  ship  were  the  tracks  of  wild  animals, 
and  from  stem  to  stem  she  was  a  mass  of  ice  and 
snow,  and  when  she  was  entered  two  men  were  found 
in  her,  frozen  stiff,  just  as  the  "Frozen  Pirate"  was 
discovered  in  a  story  not  so  true. 

So  might  the  tragedy  and  the  romance  of  the  In- 
land Seas  be  written  without  end,  for  each  year  adds 
a  new  chapter  to  the  old ;  and  yet,  how  many  thousands 
of  our  seekers  of  novelty  say,  with  the  young  woman 
I  know,  "  I  want  to  go  where  something  has  happened 
— ^where  there  have  been  battles,  and  pirates,  and 
where  there  's  sunken  ships,  and  treasure,  and  things!" 


VI 

Buffalo  and  Duluth:   the  Alpha  and  Omega  of 

the  Lakes 

IS  the  day  approaching  when  Buffalo  and  not 
Chicago  will  be  the  second  largest  city  in  the 
United  States?  and  when,  at  the  end  of  Lake 
Superior,  her  back  doors  filled  with  the  treasures  of 
the  earth  and  with  a  developed  empire  about  her, 
Duluth  will  claim  a  million  inhabitants?  Is  the  day 
far  distant  when  the  world's  greatest  manufacturing 
city  will  be  located  on  the  Niagara  River?  and  when, 
as  steel  men  all  the  world  over  believe,  Duluth  will  be 
a  second  and  perhaps  greater  Pittsburg? 

These  are  questions  which  have  never  been  of 
greater  interest  than  now,  when  the  State  of  New 
York  is  expending  over  a  hundred  million  dollars 
on  the  new  Erie  Canal,  thus  ''bringing  Buffalo  and 
the  Lakes  to  the  sea,"  and  when,  at  the  same  time, 
the  United  States  Steel  Corporation  is  devoting  ten 
million  dollars  to  the  erection  of  the  most  modem 
steel  plant  in  the  world  at  Duluth. 

"Buffalo  is  the  great  doorway  of  the  Inland  Seas," 
said   President   McKinley   only   a   short   time   before 

8  IT3 


114  The  Great  Lakes 

his  tragic  death.  "Some  day  she  will  reach  out  to 
the  ocean,  and  when  that  time  comes  she  will  be 
one  of  the  greatest  cities  in  the  world."  For  many 
years  the  people  of  Buffalo  have  dreamed  of  this. 
And  now  it  is  coming  true.  And  while  the  Pitts- 
burger,  entrenched  in  the  prosperity  of  steel  and 
fortified  behind  the  smoke  of  his  own  mills,  has  been 
laughing  at  prophecies,  away  up  at  the  end  of  the 
thousand-mile  highway  that  leads  to  Duluth,  other 
people  have  been  dreaming.  And  their  dreams, 
too,  are  coming  true.  For  years  the  silent  struggle 
for  the  supremacy  of  cities  has  been  in  progress  along 
the  Great  Lakes.  The  outside  world  has  seen  little 
of  it,  and  has  heard  little  of  it.  Now  the  beginning 
of  the  end  is  at  hand.  The  two  great  doors  of  the 
Inland  Seas  have  been  opened  wide.  At  one  end 
is  Duluth,  at  the  other  Buffalo.  Chicago  is  great, 
Buffalo  may  be  greater.  Pittsburg,  like  ancient 
Rome,  feels  that  hers  is  to  be  a  reign  unbroken,  and 
that  she  will  still  be  "Pittsburg,  Queen  of  the  World 
of  Steel"  until  the  last  call  of  Judgment  Day.  In 
another  ten  years — ^perhaps  in  less  time — she  will 
recognise  the  power  of  her  rival  in  the  North. 

These  are  predictions,  but  they  are  well  founded. 
To  find  just  why  they  are  made,  one  must  go  among 
the  powerful  men  of  the  Lakes,  among  the  iron  barons 
of  the  North  and  the  coal  barons  of  the  South  and 
East — must,  in  short,  become  acquainted  with  the 
entire   commercial   and    industrial   mechanism   which 


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Buffalo  and  Duluth  115 

exists  on  the  Great  Lakes  to-day.  They  are  not 
predictions  that  can  be  arrived  at  from  New  York, 
or  San  Francisco,  or  London,  or  Liverpool.  One 
must  talk  with  the  men  who  make  them,  must  live 
among  those  commercial  and  industrial  conditions 
for  a  long  time,  and  must  know  at  first  hand  the 
two  cities  we  speak  of — Buffalo  and  Duluth.  They 
are  predictions  which  have  a  solid  foundation  of 
facts,  and  these  facts  are  what  make  these  two  cities 
the  most  interesting  as  well  as  the  most  important 
ports  in  the  Western  World,  with  the  exception  of 
New  York  City.  I  venture  to  say  that  only  a  ridic- 
ulously small  percentage  of  our  own  people — of 
Americans,  whose  very  existence  as  an  industrial 
and  commercial  power  depends  largely  upon  the 
Lakes — know  these  two  cities  beyond  their  names, 
their  location,  and  possibly  the  number  of  their  in- 
habitants. How  many,  for  instance,  know  that 
to-day  Duluth  is  the  second  greatest  freight-shipping 
port  on  earth;  that  London,  the  capital  of  the  British 
Empire,  queen  of  the  world's  commerce  for  many 
years,  has  abdicated  in  favour  of  a  port  so  remote 
from  the  heart  of  British  commercial  enterprise  that 
it  is  doubtful  if  fifty  thousand  of  the  five  million 
people  of  London  have  ever  heard  of  the  name  of 
the  city  which  has  taken  the  place  of  the  world's 
metropolis  in  the  list  of  the  great  harbours  of  the  world  ? 
And  how  many  know,  as  well,  that  within  a  single 
night's  ride  of  the  city  of  Buffalo — within  a  radius 


II 6  The  Great  Lakes 

of  less  than  five  hundred  miles — ^live  sixty  per  cent, 
of  the  total  population  of  North  America? 

These  are  only  two  of  the  remarkable  facts  about 
Buffalo  and  Duluth,  the  Alpha  and  Omega  of  the 
Inland  Seas.  That  they  are  now  two  of  the  greatest 
freight-distributing  points  in  the  United  States  is 
shown  by  figures;  that  within  the  next  generation 
they  will  become  the  two  greatest  distributing  cities 
in  the  world  is  almost  a  certainty.  It  is  not  only 
Lake  commerce  that  assures  their  destinies.  Logically, 
they  are  situated  to  rule  the  world  of  commerce  in 
the  United  States.  Duluth  is  approximately  midway 
in  the  continent,  with  a  clear  waterway  soon  to  reach 
to  the  ocean,  and  with  the  great  West  behind  her 
already  webbed,  with  Duluth  as  the  centre,  by  thirty- 
seven  thousand  miles  of  rail;  and  Buffalo,  with  sixty 
million  people  within  five  hundred  miles  of  her  City 
Hall,  with  fifteen  great  trunk-lines  entering  the 
city,  with  the  greatest  electrical  power  of  the  age 
at  her  doors,  with  "one  hand  on  the  ocean  and  the 
other  on  the  Inland  Seas,"  holds  a  position  which 
no  other  city  can  ever  hope  to  attain.  According 
to  H.  C.  Elwood,  Chairman  of  the  Transportation 
Committee  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  of  Buffalo, 
the  combined  rail  and  water  tonnage  of  that  city 
is  not  exceeded  by  that  of  any  other  city  in  the  United 
States,  with  the  exception  of  Pittsburg.  And  the 
story  of  Buffalo's  commerce  has  just  begun.  In 
1885,    Buffalo's   total   tonnage   of   iron   ore    received 


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Buffalo  and  Duluth  117 

by  Lake  was  only  a  little  more  than  eight  thousand, — 
less  than  the  single  cargo  carried  by  one  of  the  great 
freighters  of  the  Inland  Seas  to-day!  Last  year  it 
was  five  and  a  half  millions.  The  position  that  both 
Buffalo  and  Duluth  hold  in  the  commerce  of  the 
Lakes  is  briefly  told  in  figures.  Of  the  total  tonnage 
of  ninety-seven  million  carried  on  the  Lakes  in  1907, 
more  than  fourteen  and  a  half  million  were  registered 
at  Buffalo  and  thirty-five  million  at  Duluth-Superior. 
In  other  words,  over  a  half  of  the  total  tonnage  of 
the  Lakes  passed  in  or  out  of  these  two  great  doors 
of  the  Inland  Seas  in  1907. 

There  are  few  cities  in  the  world  to-day  in  which 
romance  and  adventure  have  combined  in  more 
extraordinary  ways  with  calamity,  failure,  and  in- 
domitable courage  than  in  the  upbuilding  of  Duluth. 
Chiselled  back  into  the  rocky  hillsides,  terrace  upon 
terrace,  and  stretching  for  miles  along  the  bay  front 
where  only  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  was  the  wild 
and  rugged  grandeur  of  virgin  wilderness;  built  upon 
rock,  and  in  rock;  looking  down  upon  one  of  the 
finest  harbours  in  the  world  on  one  hand,  and  up  over 
vast  regions  red  with  iron  treasure  on  the  other, 
Duluth  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  cities  in  the  United 
States — one  of  the  most  wonderful  and  most  interest- 
ing. Twenty-five  years  ago,  only  a  village  marked 
this  stronghold  of  the  iron  barons.  The  deer,  the 
wolf,  the  bear,  the  moose  roamed  unafraid  over  places 
now  alive  with  commercial  activity.     Into  the  vast 


ii8  The  Great  Lakes 

unexplored  wildernesses,  even  less  than  a  dozen  years 
ago,  prospectors  went  out  with  their  packs  and  their 
guns,  and  searched  and  starved  and  even  died  for 
the  "ugly  wealth"  hidden  in  the  ranges  that  are  now 
giving  to  the  world  three  quarters  of  its  iron  and 
steel.  And  to-day  many  of  these  same  men,  "whose 
callouses  of  the  old  prospecting  days  have  hardly 
worn  away,"  live  in  a  city  of  eighty  thousand  people, 
whose  annual  receipts  from  its  industries  aggregate 
fifty-five  million  dollars,  and  whose  invested  wealth 
is  over  one  hundred  and  fifty  millions.  While  London, 
Liverpool,  Hamburg,  Antwerp,  Hong-kong,  and  Mar- 
seilles have  had  eyes  for  New  York  alone  in  this 
Western  World,  while  the  ports  of  ancient  and  historic 
renown  have  been  struggling  among  themselves  for 
supremacy,  away  up  at  the  end  of  the  Lake  Superior 
wilderness  the  second  greatest  freight -shipping  port 
in  the  world  was  building  itself,  quietly,  unobtrusively, 
unknown.  That  is  the  story  of  Duluth  in  a  nutshell. 
But  it  is  only  the  first  chapter.  The  others  will 
be  written  even  more  quickly,  perhaps  with  even 
greater  results.  The  commerce  of  America's  five 
Inland  Seas  has  but  just  commenced,  and  the  growth 
of  this  commerce  and  the  growth  of  Duluth  go  hand 
in  hand.  In  1892,  for  instance,  only  four  thousand 
tons  of  ore  were  shipped  from  the  Duluth-Superior 
harbour;  in  1907,  including  the  sub-port  of  Two  Har- 
bours, the  total  was  nearly  thirty  millions!  And  this 
same  percentage  of  increase  holds  good  with  other 


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Buffalo  and  Duluth  119 

products.  Fifteen  years  ago  very  few  people  along 
our  seaboards  would  have  recognised  the  name  of 
Duluth;  to  those  who  knew  the  town  it  was  often 
an  object  of  ridicule — the  "pricked  balloon,"  the 
"town. of  blasted  hopes."  Yet  in  1907,  this  same 
town,  still  unknown  in  a  large  sense,  handled  one 
sixth  of  the  combined  tonnage  of  all  the  two  hundred 
and  forty  shipping  ports  on  the  coast  of  the  United 
States.  During  the  two  hundred  and  fifty  days  of 
navigation  in  1907,  an  average  of  fifty-six  vessels 
entered  or  left  Duluth  each  day,  or  one  ship  every 
twenty-six  minutes,  day  and  night,  for  eight  months. 
These  vessels  carried  cargoes  valued  at  two  hundred 
and  eighty-eight  million  dollars.  In  other  words, 
over  a  million  dollars  a  day  left  or  entered  Duluth- 
Superiour  harbour. 

Not  long  ago  a  writer  who  was  seeking  information 
on  the  possibilities  of  our  inland  waterways  asked 
me  what  would  happen  when,  as  experts  predicted, 
the  ore  of  the  North  became  exhausted.  "Where 
will  Duluth  be  then?"  he  questioned.  This  is  what 
nine  people  out  of  ten  ask,  who  are  at  all  interested 
in  the  future  of  Duluth.  There  seems  to  be  an  almost 
universal  opinion  among  people  who  do  not  live 
along  the  Lakes  that,  with  the  exhaustion  of  the 
great  iron  deposits,  the  commerce  of  our  Inland  Seas 
will  dwindle.  A  more  near-sighted  supposition  than 
this  could  hardly  be  imagined.  At  the  present  tim.e 
ore  is  the  greatest  object  of  commerce  on  the  Great 


I20  The  Great  Lakes 

Lakes,  and  it  will  continue  to  be  so  for  many  years. 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  day  is  not  far  distant  when 
fifty  million  tons  of  iron  ore,  instead  of  thirty  million, 
wiU  leave  Duluth  each  year;  and  at  the  same  time 
millions  of  tons  of  steel  will  be  leaving  by  rail.  But 
Duluth 's  great  future  does  not  rest  on  iron  and  steel 
alone.  As  I  have  said,  thirty-seven  thousand  miles 
of  rail  already  reach  out  from  the  city  into  the  vast 
agricultural  regions  of  the  West.  It  is  the  one  logical 
doorway  of  the  vast  empire  at  its  back,  to  which  it 
offers  the  cheapest  and  shortest  route  to  the  Atlantic 
and  Europe;  just  as  it  must  become  the  great  dis- 
tributing point  through  which  the  bulk  of  the  vast 
commerce  of  the  East  will  flow  into  the  West.  There 
is  more  agricultural  and  grazing  land  tributary  to  it 
than  to  any  other  port  in  America.  And  Minnesota 
is  still  one  of  the  great  timber  States  of  the  country 
in  spite  of  the  vast  scale  on  which  lumber  operations 
have  been  carried  on  within  its  boundaries  during 
the  past  few  years.  Lake,  Cook,  and  other  northern 
counties  (several  of  these  counties  are  each  as  large 
as  a  small  State)  possess  great  forest  wealth,  and 
for  many  years  to  come  Duluth  will  be  the  great 
lumber-shipping  port  of  the  Lakes. 

These  are  a  few  of  the  reasons  why  Duluthians 
see  in  their  city  a  future  metropolis  of  perhaps  a 
million  people. 

Though  a  large  part  of  the  almost  endless  fertile 
regions  behind  it  are  still  undeveloped,   Duluth  has 


Buffalo  and  Duluth  121 

already  become  the  great  grain-shipping  port  of  the 
world.  In  1907,  over  eighty  million  bushels  of  grain 
were  shipped  from  the  Duluth-Superior  harbour,  or 
a  bushel  for  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  the 
United  States.  There  was  a  time  when  it  was  thought 
that  Chicago  would  always  be  the  greatest  grain 
port  on  earth.  But  that  time  has  passed.  Of  the 
grain  received  at  Buffalo  in  1907,  less  than  forty-two 
million  bushels  came  from  Chicago,  while  more  than 
sixty-three  million  were  shipped  from  Duluth-Su- 
perior. And  this  grain  traffic  is  growing  even  more 
rapidly  than  the  ore  traffic.  Ships  can  hardly  be 
built  fast  enough  to  handle  the  volumes  of  wheat, 
oats,  barley,  and  flax  that  come  by  rail  into  Duluth. 
The  city  can  handle  one  thousand  cars  a  day,  or  a 
million  bushels,  and  yet  this  is  not  fast  enough.  So 
great  is  the  crush  at  times  that  cars  of  grain  are  lost 
for  three  weeks  in  the  yards!  In  the  not  distant 
future,  Duluth  will  be  handling  two  thousand  cars 
a  day.  Not  only  wheat,  oats,  com,  rye,  and  barley 
are  pouring  into  Duluth  from  the  West,  but  she  has 
now  taken  first  place  as  shipper  of  flaxseed,  nearly 
twenty  million  bushels  having  left  Duluth-Superior 
harbour  last  year.  Just  what  this  quantity  of  flaxseed 
means  very  few  people  unacquainted  with  that  product 
can  realise.  Take  the  four  hundred  thousand  bushels 
brought  down  to  Buffalo  by  the  D.  R.  Hanna  in  a 
single  trip,  for  instance.  It  was  loaded  in  seven 
hours  and  was  the  product  of  forty  thousand  acres, 


122  The  Great  Lakes 

or  sixty-two  square  miles.  It  was  worth  $460,000, 
and  would  make  one  million  gallons  of  linseed  oil. 

Probably  the  most  memorable  day  in  the  history 
of  Duluth  was  April  i,  1907,  for  on  that  day  official 
notice  was  received  from  New  York  that  the  Steel 
Corporation  had  decided  to  establish  an  iron  and 
steel  plant  in  Duluth.  At  first  it  was  planned  to 
cost  ten  million  dollars.  Now  it  is  believed  that 
much  more  than  this  will  be  expended.  Preliminary 
work  has  already  commenced,  and  within  a  year 
and  a  half  it  is  expected  that  the  plant  will  be  in 
operation.  This  movement  on  the  part  of  the  great 
corporation  that  rules  the  world  of  steel  is  for  several 
reasons  the  most  interesting  that  it  has  ever  made. 
For  years,  the  ore  of  the  North  has  been  carried  a 
thousand  miles  to  the  smelters  of  the  East.  To  reach 
Pittsburg,  it  was  not  only  transported  that  thousand 
miles,  but  was  loaded  three  times  and  unloaded  three 
times.  And,  meantime,  while  millions  of  dollars 
were  being  expended  on  the  transportation  of  ore, 
while  cities  half-way  across  the  continent  existed 
and  were  growing  because  of  their  smelters,  the  city 
of  Duluth,  with  the  vast  iron  deposits  at  her  back 
door,  was  not  making  a  ton  of  steel.  This  is  one  of 
the  mysteries  which  the  Steel  Corporation  does  not 
explain;  but  it  is  fair  to  assume  that  hitherto  there 
has  not  been  a  sufficient  market  for  the  products 
of  such  a  plant  within  paying  reach  of  this  port. 

The  new  plant  will  bring  thirty  thousand  people 


Buffalo  and  Duluth  123 

to  Duluth — ^and  this  is  not  the  end.  Those  who  are 
acquainted  with  the  situation  say  that  it  is  but  the 
first  step  in  the  making  of  a  second  Pittsburg.  "The 
steel  industry,"  they  say,  "brought  almost  a  million 
people  and  billions  of  dollars  to  Pittsburg — a  city 
a  thousand  miles  from  its  ore,  and  without  natural 
advantages.  What,  then,  will  it  mean  to  Duluth, 
with  its  strategic  position  on  the  great  highways 
of  commerce,  with  its  cheap  water-power,  and  above 
all  with  its  ore  ready  to  be  dumped  direct  from  the 
mine  cars  into  the  smelters?" 

In  short,  the  dreams  of  Duluth 's  old  "boomers" 
are  coming  true.  The  great  East,  with  its  railroad 
and  manufacturing  development,  has  been  supplied 
with  its  steel — from  Pittsburg.  Now  it  is  the  West 
and  South-west,  and  the  Orient,  to  which  our  great 
volumes  of  steel  trade  will  turn.  It  is  Duluth's  chance. 
Because  the  ore  is  at  her  doors,  she  can  turn  out  iron 
and  steel  cheaper  than  any  other  city  in  the  world; 
and  she  is  the  nearest  distributing  point  to  the  West. 
This  movement  to  Duluth  is  inevitable.  The  world's 
steel  industry  has  been  constantly  moving  and  chang- 
ing. Since  1564,  the  centre  of  the  industry  has  moved 
from  Birmingham,  England,  from  Lynn  through 
Connecticut  to  New  Jersey,  then  to  Philadelphia, 
and  lastly  to  Pittsburg,  where  it  has  remained  for 
fifty  years.  Of  late  years,  the  tendency  has  been 
westward,  the  movement  culminating  in  Chicago. 
Now  it  is  centring  in  Duluth.     In  a  way,   Duluth's 


124  The  Great  Lakes 

history  will  be  similar  to  that  of  Pittsburg.  Duluth 
and  Superior,  twin  cities  with  one  harbour  and  identical 
interests,  cannot  follow  the  example  of  Pittsburg 
and  Allegheny,  and  unite  politically,  as  State  lines 
divide  them,  Duluth  being  in  Minnesota  and  Superior 
in  Wisconsin;  but  commercially  they  are  fast  be- 
coming one.  Together  they  will  not  only  head  the 
ports  of  the  world,  probably  for  all  time  to  come, 
but  will  become  one  of  the  greatest  manufacturing 
centres  on  the  continent.  With  a  harbour  frontage 
of  forty-five  miles,  with  electrical  power  from  the 
St.  Louis  Falls  second  only  to  that  of  Niagara,  with 
iron  and  steel  at  her  doors,  and  with  a  world-market 
behind  her,  Duluth,  already  the  largest  coal-receiving 
port  in  the  world,  possesses  manufacturing  advantages 
beyond  those  of  any  other  city  on  the  continent, 
with  the  exception  of  Buffalo.  There  are  good  reasons 
why  this  coming  Pittsburg  of  the  North  will  never 
equal  Buffalo  in  population  and  commercial  activity; 
there  are  just  as  good  reasons  why  no  other  city  in 
the  United  States,  with  the  exception  of  New  York 
and  Chicago,  will  equal  Buffalo.  At  the  same  time, 
as  a  member  of  the  Steel  Corporation  said  to  me: 
"If  steel  and  only  a  few  natural  advantages  made 
Pittsburg  what  it  is — ^what  will  steel,  and  all  the 
natural  advantages  in  the  world,  do  for  Duluth?" 

Of  course  it  is  not  possible  to  conceive  that  Duluth, 
even  as  a  great  steel  city,  would  use  more  than  a 
small  fraction  of  the  enormous  ore  tonnage  that  is 


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Buffalo  and  Duluth  125 

annually  taken  from  the  Minnesota  ranges.  If  millions 
of  dollars  were  spent  each  year  in  the  erection  of 
new  steel  plants  in  Duluth,  even  the  annual  increase 
of  ore  taken  from  the  mines  could  not  be  used  at 
home  for  a  long  time  to  come.  The  ore  traffic  on 
the  Lakes  is  bound  to  become  larger  even  as  Duluth 
develops  into  a  steel  city.  And  a  constantly  increasing 
percentage  of  this  ore  is  going  to  Buffalo — ^not  to 
be  transhipped  to  Pittsburg,  but  to  be  converted 
into  iron  and  steel  in  that  city.  I  believe  that  very 
few  people  are  aware  of  the  fact  that  Buffalo  is  already 
an  important  iron-  and  steel-smelting  point.  The 
largest  independent  steel-making  plant  in  the  United 
States  is  now  in  operation  in  South  Buffalo.  This 
is  the  Lackawanna  Iron  and  Steel  Company,  capital- 
ised at  sixty  million  dollars,  employing  between 
six  and  ten  thousand  men,  and  undergoing  constant 
enlargement.  The  plants  of  the  New  York  Steel 
Company  and  the  Wickwire  Steel  Company  are  now 
in  course  of  construction  on  the  Buffalo  and  Niagara 
rivers,  and  other  steel-  and  iron-making  plants  are 
in  operation.  Each  year  sees  Buffalo  drawing  more 
and  more  ore  away  from  the  Pittsburg  smelters. 
In  1900,  Buffalo  made  only  three  hundred  and  seventy 
thousand  tons  of  pig-iron.  In  1907,  the  production 
was  one  million  three  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
tons,  and  in  1909  there  will  be  a  considerable  increase. 
A  recent  investigation  showed  that  the  many  great 
iron-producing  and  iron-working  plants  which  extend 


126  The  Great  Lakes 

along  the  navigable  waters  of  the  Buffalo  have  doubled 
their  pay-rolls  and  almost  trebled  their  production 
since  1900.  The  same  investigation  brought  forth 
the  fact  that  a  ton  of  foundry  iron  can  be  produced 
in  Buffalo  for  sixty-three  cents  less  than  in  Pittsburg. 
After  a  year's  study  of  the  situation  in  Buffalo,  Mr. 
Elisha  Walker,  the  international  expert  in  iron  and 
steel  manufacture,  said  that,  in  a  few  years,  Buffalo 
would  rival  Pittsburg  in  the  use  of  iron  ore. 

While  steel  plants  are  generally  the  most  powerful 
agents  that  work  for  the  increase  of  a  city's  popu- 
lation and  wealth,  and  while  it  is  true  that  scores  of 
smaller  users  of  iron  and  steel  are  flocking  to  Buffalo, 
just  as  other  hundreds  grouped  themselves  about 
the  big  parent  furnaces  in  Pittsburg,  Buffalo's  great 
future  does  not  depend  upon  her  development  as 
a  steel-manufacturing  city.  As  F.  Howard  Mason, 
then  Secretary  of  the  Buffalo  Chamber  of  Commerce, 
said  to  me:  "Buffalo  has  more  than  one  iron  in  the 
fire.  Steel  is  but  one  of  many  things  that  will  make 
her  a  city  of  millions  a  quarter  of  a  century  from 
now." 

From  my  own  investigations-  and  from  my  ov/n 
close  study  of  Lake  traffic,  I  feel  confident  in  saying 
that,  although  Buffalo  is  one  of  the  important  ore-con- 
verting centres  of  the  country,  steel  and  iron  are 
not  the  most  important  of  the  agents  that  will  work 
for  her  future  greatness.  This  may  seem  inconceiv- 
able to  those  who  live  in  cities  the  very  existence 


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Buffalo  and  Duluth  127 

of  which  depends  upon  iron  and  steel;  yet  it  is  one 
of  the  soundest  arguments  for  the  optimistic  opinion 
that  Buffalo  is  destined  to  become  the  third,  if  not 
the  second,  largest  city  in  the  United  States.  Just 
as  Duluth  is  the  logical  shipping  and  receiving  port 
of  the  West,  so  is  Buffalo  the  great  receiving  and 
distributing  port  of  the  East.  Cleveland  will  always 
be  an  important  Lake  port,  but  it  is  impossible  to 
compare  its  destiny  with  that  of  Buffalo.  With  the 
new  Erie  Canal  in  operation,  lake  highways  from 
west  to  east  will  lead  to  Buffalo  as  surely  as  all  roads 
led  to  old  Rome.  This  year  the  total  tonnage  of 
Buffalo  harbour,  which  is  closed  for  at  least  four  months 
of  the  year,  will  be  considerably  greater  than  that 
of  Liverpool.  Of  the  products  passing  through  the 
Detroit  River  in  1907,  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  hard 
coal  was  shipped  from  Buffalo,  seventy-five  per  cent. 
of  the  flour  and  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  the  wheat 
came  to  Buffalo;  also  seventy-five  per  cent,  of  the 
com,  ninety-eight  per  cent,  of  the  oats,  ninety  per 
cent,  of  the  flaxseed,  and  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  the 
barley.  In  other  words,  Buffalo  may  be  regarded 
as  almost  the  only  receiving  port  on  the  Lakes  for 
Western  grain. 

Mayor  Adams  hit  the  nail  pretty  squarely  on  the 
head  when  he  said  that  Buffalo's  future  greatness 
rests  chiefly  upon  the  fact  that  this  city  will,  within 
a  very  few  years,  be  the  greatest  converting,  or  man- 
ufacturing,   point    in   North   America.      The   cost   of 


128  The  Great  Lakes 

bringing  raw  materials  to  her  workshops  from  all 
Western  points  is  already  reduced  to  a  minimum. 
The  Erie  Canal  will  link  her  mills  with  the  ocean. 
The  unlimited  resources  of  Niagara  furnish  her  with 
the  cheapest  power  in  the  world.  Her  proximity 
to  the  coal-fields  provides  her  with  fuel  for  $i.6o 
to  $2.60  per  ton.  Natural  gas  for  manufacturing 
purposes  is  retailed  at  a  little  over  twenty-seven 
cents  per  thousand  cubic  feet.  And,  above  all,  there 
are  sixty  millions  of  people  within  five  hundred  miles 
of  her  City  Hall.  It  was  between  1900  and  1905 
when  Buffalo  really  awoke  to  her  unlimited  oppor- 
tunities. It  is  interesting  to  compare  her  growth 
between  those  years  with  that  of  Pittsburg,  one  of 
the  most  progressive  cities  in  the  United  States. 
In  that  time  Pittsburg's  capital  increased  twenty- 
two  per  cent.,  Buffalo's  forty-six  per  cent.  The 
number  of  wage-earners  in  Pittsburg  increased  a 
little  over  two  per  cent.,  while  in  Buffalo  they  in- 
creased twenty-nine  per  cent.  The  value  of  Pittsburg's 
products  increased  three  per  cent.;  of  Buffalo's, 
forty-two  per  cent.  These  figures  show  the  remark- 
able rapidity  with  which  Buffalo  is  overtaking  the 
cities  ahead  of  her  in  population. 

Because  of  the  waterways  at  her  door,  cheap  power, 
and  the  millions  of  consumers  within  a  night's  reach 
of  her  mills,  Buffalo  has  become  the  second  city  in 
the  United  States  in  the  production  of  flour,  now 
ranking    next    to    Minneapolis,    and    at    her   present 


Buffalo  and  Duluth  129 

rate  of  increase  she  will  be  the  world's  greatest  milling 
centre  in  another  five  years.  In  1901,  she  was  pro- 
ducing only  about  half  a  million  barrels  of  flour;  in 
1907,  her  product  was  over  three  million  barrels, 
and  it  is  predicted  that  the  output  in  1909  will  be 
four  millions.  Within  the  last  three  years  Buffalo 
has  become  the  chief  malting  city  in  America.  In 
1907,  her  output  was  ten  million  bushels  as  compared 
with  four  million  in  1900. 

To  handle  her  Lake  freight  at  the  present  time, 
Buffalo  has  twenty-four  elevators  with  a  total  storage 
capacity  of  twenty-two  million  bushels,  and  a  daily 
elevating  capacity  of  six  million  bushels;  nine  ore 
docks;  five  coal  trestles  with  a  daily  loading  capacity 
of  twenty-two  thousand  tons — and  with  these  might 
be  included  three  railroad  storage-yards  with  an 
aggregate  capacity  of  four  hundred  thousand  tons. 
Thirteen  lines  of  steamships,  not  including  the  many 
companies  represented  by  the  big  freighters,  ply  the 
Lakes  from  Buffalo ;  and  the  fifteen  trunk  lines  centring 
in  the  city  provide  two  hundred  and  fifty-three  pas- 
senger trains  a  day.  With  all  of  this  vast  machinery 
working  night  and  day  to  care  for  Buffalo's  present 
traffic,  the  question  naturally  arises.  What  will  happen 
to  Buffalo  when  the  new  Erie  Canal  links  her  with 
the  sea? 

During  the  next  decade,  or  less,  Buffalo  will  astonish 
the  whole  world  by  her  industrial  growth.  The  effects 
of  the  canal  project  are  already  being  felt,  and  manu- 


130  The  Great  Lakes 

facturing  capital  is  hurrying  to  Btiffalo  as  never 
before.  The  Federal  Government  is  deepening  the 
Niagara  River  to  a  depth  of  twenty-one  feet  as  far 
down  as  North  Tonawanda,  and  this,  together  with 
the  deepening  of  the  Buffalo  River,  is  opening  up 
a  new  territory  for  factory  sites,  soon  to  be  accessible 
to  the  largest  ships.  Millions  of  dollars  of  capital 
are  locating,  or  planning  to  locate,  here.  On  the  one 
side  is  the  cheap  transportation  of  the  Lakes;  on 
the  other  will  soon  be  the  ''man-made  river  reaching 
to  the  sea."  With  the  joining  of  these  water- 
ways no  other  city  in  the  United  States  will  be 
able  to  compete  with  Buffalo  as  a  manufacturing 
centre. 

The  actual  task  of  digging  the  new  canal  for  which 
the  people  of  New  York  voted  one  hundred  and  one 
million  dollars,  and  which  will  connect  Buffalo  with 
tidewater  by  a  thousand-ton  waterway,  is  now  at 
hand.  Few  people  realise  just  how  stupendous  this 
task  is.  While  every  intelligent  American  is  acquainted 
with  the  Panama  Canal  project,  few  know  that  this 
connecting  link  between  the  Lakes  and  the  ocean  is 
a  greater  public  improvement  for  the  State  of  New 
York  to  carry  out  than  is  the  building  of  the  Panama 
Canal  for  the  United  States  Government,  and  it  is 
of  hardly  less  commercial  value.  Its  cost  will  be 
greater  than  that  of  Suez,  and  in  a  short  time  its 
tonnage  will  be  more  than  that  of  Suez.  The  first 
one  hundred  and  twenty-five  miles  were  under  contract 


Buffalo  and  Duluth  131 

in  January,  1908,  with  another  sixty-five  miles  ready 
to  be  contracted  for. 

This  great  waterway,  including  the  Hudson  River, 
will  pass  from  or  to  and  through  the  city  of  New 
York  and  adjacent  cities  in  New  Jersey,  Poughkeepsie, 
Albany,  Troy,  Schenectady,  Utica,  Syracuse,  Oswego, 
Rochester,  and  Buffalo,  besides  smaller  towns,  pos- 
sessing an  aggregate  population  of  over  six  million. 
The  canal  when  completed  will  really  terminate  at 
Tonawanda,  on  the  Niagara  River,  the  route  to  Buffalo 
from  there  being  via  the  Niagara  River,  the  federal 
ship  canal,  and  the  Erie  Basin.  While  the  old  canal 
has  a  depth  of  only  from  seven  to  nine  feet  and  a 
width  on  the  bottom  of  fifty-two,  the  new  waterway 
will  have  a  uniform  depth  of  twelve  feet,  with  a  min- 
imimi  width  at  the  bottom  of  seventy-five  feet,  thus 
being  capable  of  carrying  boats  one  hundred  and 
fifty  feet  long,  twenty-five  feet  beam,  and  with  a 
draft  of  ten  feet.  The  present  capacity  of  an  Erie 
Canal  boat  is  two  hundred  and  forty  tons,  while  the 
new  boats  will  carry  a  thousand  tons. 

I  have  shown  in  preceding  articles  what  a  tre- 
mendous saving  to  the  people  of  the  United  States 
is  made  because  of  Lake  transportation,  and  this 
will  be  greatly  increased  by  the  new  canal.  Large 
aggregations  of  capital  will  own  not  merely  Lake 
vessels,  but  terminals  and  canal  fleets  as  well,  so 
that  from  Lake  ports  they  can  name  a  through  freight 
rate  to  New  York  or  to  foreign  countries.     Within 


132  The  Great  Lakes 

a  few  years  after  its  completion,  the  canal  will  probably 
be  carrying  twenty  million  tons  of  freight  from  Buffalo 
to  the  ocean.  Taking  this  figure  as  a  basis,  it  is  easy 
to  figure  what  a  tremendous  saving  the  canal  will 
bring  about.  It  now  costs  three  and  a  half  cents 
a  bushel  to  send  grain  from  Buffalo  to  New  York. 
The  new  canal  rate  should  be  not  more  than  a  cent 
a  bushel.  On  twenty  million  bushels  of  grain  this 
means  a  saving  of  five  hundred  thousand  dollars, 
which  will  either  go  into  the  pockets  of  the  producer 
or  the  consumer  or  be  divided  between  the  two. 
Freight  of  all  descriptions,  manufactured  products, 
and  iron  and  steel,  can  be  transported  from  Buffalo 
to  tidewater  for  half  of  a  mill  per  ton  per  mile.  In 
other  words,  on  the  new  canal  all  kinds  of  freight 
can  be  shipped  from  Buffalo  to  New  York,  a  distance 
of  four  hundred  and  forty-six  miles,  at  twenty-two 
cents  per  ton.  The  present  cost  is  eighty-seven  cents. 
On  twenty  million  tons  this  saving  of  nearly  sixty- 
five  cents  a  ton  would  total  nearly  thirteen  million 
dollars. 

What  this  would  mean  to  Buffalo  it  is  almost  im- 
possible to  estimate,  especially  in  regard  to  the  steel 
industry.  Buffalo  now  has  an  advantage  over  Pitts- 
burg in  the  cost  of  ore,  limestone,  and  several  other 
matters  incident  to  the  manufacture  of  iron  and 
steel,  Pittsburg's  sole  remaining  advantage  being 
its  proximity  to  coking  coal.  This  will  be  obliterated. 
A  large  percentage  of  the  vast  steel  and   allied   in- 


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Buffalo  and  Duluth  133 

dustries  centring  at  Pittsburg  will,  of  their  own 
volition,  move  within  the  boundaries  of  the  State 
of  New  York  and  locate  along  the  Niagara  frontier. 
This  industrial  migration  has  already  begun.  It  wiU 
continue,  naturally,  ceaselessly.  The  ore  will  meet 
the  coke  at  Buffalo,  and  the  manufactured  product 
will  be  floated  down  the  Erie  Canal  instead  of  being 
hauled  across  the  AUeghanies.     This  is  inevitable. 

And  just  as  inevitable  is  the  migration  of  other 
industries  to  Buffalo  from  other  cities.  Not  only 
does  the  cheap  lake  and  canal  transportation  call 
to  them,  but  also  the  cheap  and  unlimited  power 
of  Niagara.  A  few  years  ago  George  Westinghouse 
said:  "I  expect  to  live  to  see  the  day  when  a  city 
that  will  astonish  the  world  will  stretch  along  the 
entire  Niagara  frontier — and  this  city  will  be  Buffalo.'' 
Those  who  investigate  this  frontier  to-day  cannot 
fail  to  see  the  strength  of  his  prediction.  Tesla  said 
that  Niagara  power  would  revolutionise  manufacturing 
in  the  United  States.  It  is  already  revolutionising 
it  in  and  about  Buffalo,  and  the  power  of  the  world's 
greatest  fall  has  only  been  tapped.  On  the  American 
side  the  Niagara  Falls  Power  Company  is  developing 
one  hundred  and  five  thousand  horse-power,  and 
the  Niagara  Falls  Hydraulic  Power  and  Manufactur- 
ing Company  fifty  thousand,  while  on  the  Canadian 
side  the  Canadian  Niagara  Falls  Company  is  developing 
fifty  thousand  horse-power  and  the  Electrical  Develop- 
ment   Company    and    the    Ontario    Power    Company 


134  The  Great  Lakes 

sixty-two  thousand  each.  Less  than  four  per  cent. 
of  the  total  flow  of  water  over  Niagara  Falls  has 
been  diverted  by  the  companies  now  in  operation. 
The  total  fall  of  water  is  theoretically  capable  of 
producing  over  seven  million  horse-power,  which 
would  run  virtually  all  of  the  manufacturing  plants 
in  the  United  States. 

At  the  present  time  about  seventy-five  thousand 
electrical  horse-power  is  consumed  in  Buffalo  by 
manufacturing  and  mercantile  establishments.  What 
this  cheap  power  means  to  the  city  can  best  be  shown 
in  figures.  In  nearly  all  cities  the  power  required 
for  manufacturing  purposes  is  derived  from  steam 
produced  from  coal.  In  its  simplest  form  this  method 
of  generating  power  requires  apparatus  consisting 
of  steam  boilers  with  their  settings,  pumps,  steam- 
pipings,  flues  and  stack,  facilities  for  coal-storage, 
engines,  foundations,  and  beltings — demanding  al- 
together a  large  amount  of  floor-space.  The  cost 
of  an  installation  of  such  equipment  has  been  found 
to  be  approximately  fifty  dollars  per  rated  horse- 
power. Electric  motors  using  Niagara  power  can 
be  installed  for  less  than  thirty  dollars  per  rated 
horse-power.  In  other  words,  the  saving  in  power 
to  the  manufacturer  is  almost  one  half.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  steam  plant  requires  a  considerable  force 
of  men  to  operate  and  maintain  it,  while  electrical 
power  cuts  down  this  service  two  thirds. 

Why  manufacturers   are  flocking  to   Buffalo,   and 


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Buffalo  and  Duluth  135 

why  the  greatest  manufacturing  city  in  the  world 
is  bound  to  extend  along  the  Niagara  frontier,  is 
graphically  shown  by  the  following  figures  comparing 
the  cost  of  Buffalo  power  with  that  of  other  represent- 
ative cities.  Assuming  the  maximum  power  used 
to  be  one  hundred  horse-power,  the  number  of  working 
hours  a  day  to  be  ten,  and  the  "load  factor,"  or  average 
power  actually  used,  to  be  seventy-five  per  cent, 
of  the  total  one  hundred,  the  cost  per  month  in  the 
cities  named  is  about  as  follows: 

Boston $937  •  5° 

Philadelphia 839 .  25 

New  York 699.37 

Chicago 629.43 

Cleveland 559-5° 

Pittsburg 419.62 

Buffalo 184 .  91 

Niagara  Falls 144 .17 

These  figures  show  that  the  manufacturer  on  the 
Niagara  frontier  not  only  possesses  the  cheapest 
water-power  in  the  country,  but  that  his  power  costs 
him  less  than  half  as  much  as  it  cost  his  next  nearest 
rival,  the  manufacturer  at  Pittsburg.  While  power 
costs  his  Boston  competitor  a  hundred  and  fifty 
dollars  per  horse-power  per  year,  the  Buffalo  manu- 
facturer pays  less  than  thirty  dollars.  Even  without 
cheap  transportation  rates,  this  item  alone  would  give 
him  an  overwhelming  advantage  in  the  race  for  trade. 

Destined  to  be  one  of  the  greatest  if  not  the  greatest 
manufacturing  city  on  earth,  Buffalo  is  also  one 
of   the   most   beautiful.     To-day   she   possesses   four 


136  The  Great  Lakes 

hundred  miles  of  asphalt  pavement — more  smooth 
pavement  than  is  found  in  Paris,  Washington,  or 
any  other  city.  She  is  the  greatest  "home  city" 
in  America.  Out  of  a  population  of  more  than  four 
hundred  thousand  people,  the  home-owning  pop- 
ulation is  only  thirty  thousand  below  the  total 
registered  vote.  As  a  convention  city  she  has  only 
one  rival,  and  that  is  Detroit.  Nature  has  showered 
blessings  upon  her  without  stint.  And  I  confidently 
believe  that  many  of  the  young  men  and  women 
of  Buffalo  will  live  to  see  the  day  when  one  city  will 
stretch  along  the  entire  Niagara  frontier,  with  a 
population  exceeded  by  that  of  only  one  or  at  most 
two  other  American  cities. 


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VII 

A  Trip  on  a  Great  Lakes  Freighter 

IN  my  previous  chapters  I  have  described  nearly 
every  phase  of  Lake  shipping,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  one,  which,  while  not  being  vitally 
concerned  with  the  story  of  our  fresh- water  marine,  is 
still  one  of  the  most  interesting,  and  perhaps  the  least 
known  of  all.  That  is  the  "inner  life"  of  one  of  our 
Great  Lakes  freighters ;  the  life  of  the  crew  and 
the  favoured  few  who  are  privileged  to  travel  as  pas- 
senger guests  of  the  owners  upon  one  of  these  steel 
monsters  of  the  Inland  Seas.  In  more  than  one  way 
our  Lake  marine  is  unusual;   in  this  it  is  unique. 

Recently  one  of  the  finest  steel  yachts  that  ever 
sailed  fresh  water  came  up  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the 
Lakes.  Its  owner  was  a  millionaire  many  times 
over.  With  his  wife  he  had  cruised  around  the  world, 
but  for  the  first  time  they  had  come  to  the  Lakes. 
I  had  the  fortune  to  converse  with  him  upon  his 
yacht  about  the  craft  of  other  countries,  and  as  we 
lay  at  anchor  in  the  Detroit  River  there  passed  us 
the  greatest  ship  on  the   Inland   Seas — the   Thomas 

F.   Cole;    and,   addressing  his  wife,   I   asked,   "How 

137 


138  The  Great  Lakes 

would  you  like  to  take  a  cruise  on  a  vessel  like  that?" 
The  lady  laughed,  as  if  such  a  suggestion  were 
amusing  indeed,  and  said  that  if  she  were  a  man 
she  might  attempt  it,  and  perhaps  enjoy  it  to  a  degree, 
and  when  I  went  on  to  describe  some  of  the  things 
that  I  knew  about  "those  great,  ugly  ships,"  as  she 
called  them,  I  am  quite  sure  that  all  of  my  words 
were  not  received  without  doubt.  This  little  ex- 
perience was  the  last  of  many  that  proved  to  me  the 
assertion  I  have  made  before — ^that  to  nine  people 
out  of  ten,  at  least,  our  huge,  silent,  red  ships  that 
bring  down  the  wealth  of  the  North  are  a  mystery. 
They  are  not  beautiful.  Freighted  low  down,  their 
steel  sides  scraped  and  marred  like  the  hands  of  a 
labourer,  their  huge  funnels  emitting  clouds  of  bi- 
tuminous smoke,  their  barren  steel  decks  glaring  in 
the  heat  of  the  summer  sun,  there  seems  to  be  but 
little  about  them  to  attract  the  pleasure  seeker.  From 
the  distance  at  which  they  are  usually  seen  their 
aft  and  forward  cabins  appear  like  coops,  their  pilot 
houses  even  less. 

Yet  fortunate  is  the  person  who  has  the  "pull" 
to  secure  passage  on  one  of  these  monster  carriers 
of  the  Lakes,  for  behind  all  of  that  uninviting  ex- 
terior there  is  a  luxury  of  marine  travel  that  is  equalled 
nowhere  else  in  the  world  except  on  the  largest  and 
finest  of  private  yachts.  These  leviathans  of  the 
Lakes,  that  bring  down  dirty  ore  and  take  up  dirtier 
coal,   are  the  greatest   money-makers   in  the  world, 


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A  Trip  on  a  Great  Lakes  Freighter       139 

and  they  are  owned  by  men  of  wealth.  The  people 
who  travel  on  them  are  the  owner's  guests.  Nothing 
is  too  good  for  them.  Each  year  the  rivalry  between 
builders  is  increasing  as  to  whose  ships  shall  possess 
the  finest  "guests'  quarters."  Behind  the  smoke 
and  dirt  and  unseemly  red  steel  that  are  seen  from 
shore  or  deck,  a  fortune  has  been  spent  in  those  rooms 
over  the  small  doors  of  which  one  reads  the  word 
"Owners."  You  may  climb  up  the  steel  side  of  the 
ship,  you  may  explore  it  from  stem  to  stem,  but 
not  until  you  are  a  "guest" — ^not  until  the  "key 
to  the  ship"  has  been  handed  to  you,  are  its  luxuries, 
its  magnificence,  its  mysteries,  clearly  revealed. 

My  telegram  read: 

"Take  my  private  room  on  the  Harry  Berwind 
at  Ashtabula." 

It  was  signed  by  G.  Ashley  Tomlinson,  of  Duluth. 
The  Berwind  is  one  of  the  finest  of  Tomlinson 's  sixteen 
steel  ships  and  is  named  after  one  of  the  best  known 
fuel  transportation  men  on  the  Lakes — a  vessel  that 
can  carry  eleven  thousand  tons  without  special  crowd- 
ing and  makes  twelve  miles  an  hour  while  she  is  doing 
it.  I  reached  the  great  ore  and  coal  docks  at  Ash- 
tabula at  a  happy  moment. 

The  other  guests  had  arrived,  seven  in  all — four 
ladies  and  three  gentlemen,  and  we  met  on  the  red 
and  black  dock,  with  mountains  of  ore  and  coal  about 
us,  with  the  thundering  din  of  working  machines 
in  our  ears,  and  out  there  before  us,  enshrouded  in 


I40  The  Great  Lakes 

smoke  and  black  dust,  the  great  ship  that  was  to 
carry  us  for  nearly  a  thousand  miles  up  the  Lakes 
and  back  again.  It  was  a  happy  moment,  I  say, 
for  I  met  the  seven  guests  in  this  wilderness  of  din 
and  dirt — and  six  of  them  had  never  been  aboard  a 
freighter  in  their  lives.  They  had  heard,  of  course, 
what   lay   beyond   those   red   steel   walls.      But   was 

there  not  a  mistake  here?    Was  it  possible 

Doubt  filled  their  faces.  High  above  them  towered 
the  straight  wall  of  the  ship  with  a  narrow  ladder 
reaching  down  to  them.  At  the  huge  coal  derricks 
whole  cars  of  coal  were  being  lifted  up  as  if  they 
were  no  more  than  scuttles  in  the  hands  of  a  strong 
man  and  their  contents  sent  thundering  into  the 
gaping  hatches;  black  dust  clouded  the  air,  settling 
in  a  thousand  minute  particles  on  fabric  and  flesh; 
black-faced  men  shouted  and  worked  at  the  loading 
machine;  the  crash  of  shunting  cars  came  inter- 
minably from  the  yards;  and  upon  it  all  the  sun 
beat  fiercely,  and  the  air  that  entered  our  nostrils 
seemed  thick — ^thick  with  the  dust  and  grime  and 
heat  of  it  all.  A  black-faced,  sweating  man,  who 
was  the  mate,  leaned  over  the  steel  side  high  above 
us  and  motioned  us  aft,  and  the  seven  guests  hurried 
through  the  thickness  of  the  air,  the  ladies  shuddering 
and  cringing  as  the  cars  of  coal  thundered  high  over 
their  heads,  until  they  came  to  the  big  after  port 
with  a  plank  laid  to  the  dock.  Up  this  they  filed, 
their  faces  betraying  more  doubt,  more  uneasiness, 


A  Trip  on  a  Great  Lakes  Freighter       141 

more  discomfort  as  hot  blasts  of  furnace  air  surged 
against  them;  then  up  a  narrow  iron  stair,  through 
a  door — and  out  there  before  them  lay  the  ship, 
her  thirty  hatches  yawning  like  caverns,  and  every- 
where coal — and  coal  dust.  The  ladies  gasped  and 
drew  their  dresses  tightly  about  them  as  they  were 
guided  along  the  narrow  promenade  between  the 
edge  of  the  ship  and  the  open  hatches,  and  at  last 
they  were  halted  before  one  of  those  doors  labelled 
"Owners." 

Then  the  change!  It  came  so  suddenly  that  it 
fairly  took  the  breath  away  from  those  who  had 
never  been  on  a  freighter  before.  The  guests  filed 
through  that  narrow  door  into  a  great  room,  which 
a  second  glance  showed  them  to  be  a  parlour.  Their 
feet  sank  in  the  noiseless  depths  of  rich  velvet  carpet; 
into  their  heated  faces  came  the  refreshing  breaths 
of  electric  fans;  great  upholstered  chairs  opened 
to  them  welcomingly;  the  lustre  of  mahogany  met 
their  eyes,  and  magazines  and  books  and  papers 
were  ready  for  them  in  profusion.  To  us  there  now 
came  the  thunder  of  the  coal  as  if  from  afar;  here 
was  restfulness  and  quiet — ^through  the  windows  we 
could  see  the  dust  and  smoke  and  heat  hovering 
about  the  ship  like  a  pall. 

This  was  the  general  parlour  into  which  we  had 
been  ushered;  and  now  I  hung  close  behind  the  ship's 
guests,  watching  and  enjoying  the  amazement  that 
continued  to  grow  in  them.     From  each  side  of  the 


142  The  Great  Lakes 

parlour  there  led  a  narrow  hall  and  on  each  side  of 
each  hall  there  was  a  large  room — the  guest-cham- 
bers— and  at  the  end  of  each  hall  there  was  a  bathroom ; 
and  in  the  bedrooms,  with  their  brass  beds,  their 
rich  tapestries  and  curtains,  our  feet  still  sank  in  velvet 
carpet,  our  eyes  rested  upon  richly  cushioned  chairs — 
everywhere  there  was  the  luxury  and  wealth  of  ap- 
pointment that  a  millionaire  had  planned  for  the 
favoured  few  whom  he  called  his  guests. 

Now  I  retired  from  the  guest-chambers  to  my 
own  private  room.  I  am  going  a  good  deal  into  detail 
in  this  description  of  the  guests'  quarters  of  a  great 
freighter  like  the  Berwind,  for  I  remember  once  being 
told  by  a  shipbuilder  of  the  Clyde  that  he  "could 
hardly  believe  that  such  a  thing  existed,"  and  I  know 
there  are  millions  of  others  who  have  the  same  doubts. 
The  forward  superstructure  of  a  Great  Lakes  freighter 
might  be  compared  to  a  two-story  house,  with  the 
pilot  house  still  on  top  of  that ;  and  from  the  luxurious 
quarters  of  the  "first  story,"  which  in  the  Berwind 
are  on  a  level  with  the  deck  of  the  vessel,  a  velvet- 
carpeted  stair  led  to  the  "observation  room" — a 
great,  richly  furnished  room  with  many  windows 
in  it,  from  which  one  may  look  out  upon  the  sea  in 
all  directions  except  behind.  And  from  this  room 
one  door  led  into  the  Captain's  quarters,  and  another 
into  the  private  suite  of  rooms  which  I  was  fortunate 
enough  to  occupy  on  this  trip.  The  finest  hotel  in 
the  land  could  not  have  afforded  finer  conveniences 


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A  Trip  on  a  Great  Lakes  Freighter       143 

than  this  black  and  red  ship,  smothered  in  the  loading 
of  ten  thousand  tons  of  coal.  In  the  cool  seclusion 
of  its  passenger  quarters  a  unique  water- works  system 
gave  hot  and  cold  water  to  every  room;  an  electric 
light  plant  aft  gave  constant  light,  and  power  for 
the  fans.  Nothing  was  wanting,  even  to  a  library 
and  music,  to  make  of  the  interior  of  this  forward 
part  of  the  ship  a  palace  fit  for  the  travel  of  a  king. 
Within  a  few  minutes  we  had  all  plunged  into  baths; 
hardly  were  we  out  and  dressed  when  the  steward 
came  with  glasses  of  iced  lemonade;  and  even  as 
the  black  clouds  of  grime  and  dirt  still  continued 
to  settle  over  the  ship  we  gathered  in  the  great  ob- 
servation room,  a  happy  party  of  us  now,  and  the 
music  of  mandolin  and  phonograph  softened  the 
sounds  of  labour  that  rumbled  to  us  from  outside. 

Then,  suddenly,  there  fell  a  quiet.  The  ship  was 
loaded.  Loud  voices  rose  in  rapid  command,  the 
donkey-engines  rumbled  and  jerked  as  their  cables 
dragged  the  steel  hatch-covers  into  place,  and  the 
freighter's  whistle  echoed  in  long,  sonorous  blasts  in 
its  call  for  a  tug.  And  then,  from  half  a  mile  away, 
came  the  shrieking  reply  of  one  of  those  little  black 
giants,  and  up  out  of  the  early  sunset  gloom  of  evening 
it  raced  in  the  maelstrom  of  its  own  furious  speed, 
and  placed  itself  ahead  of  us,  for  all  the  world  like 
a  tiny  ant  tugging  away  at  a  prey  a  hundred  times 
its  size.  Lights  sprung  up  in  a  thousand  places  along 
shore,  and  soon,  far  away,  appeared  the  blazing  eye 


144  The  Great  Lakes 

of  the  harbour  light,  and  beyond  that  stretched  the 
vast  opaqueness  of  the  "  thousand -mile  highway" 
that  led  to  Duluth  and  the  realms  of  the  iron  barons 
of  the  North.  Once  clear,  and  with  the  sea  before 
us,  the  tug  dropped  away,  a  shudder  passed  through 
the  great  ship  as  her  engines  began  to  work,  our 
whistle  gave  vent  to  two  or  three  joyous,  tritimphant 
cheers,  and  our  journey  had  begun. 

It  was  then  that  our  steward's  pretty  little  wife, 
Mrs.  Brooks,  appeared,  smiling,  cool,  delightfully 
welcome,  and  announced  that  dinner  was  ready, 
and  that  this  time  we  must  pardon  them  for  being 
late.  Out  upon  the  steel  decks  men  were  already 
flushing  off  with  huge  lengths  of  hose,  the  ship's 
lights  were  burning  brilliantly,  and  from  far  aft, 
nearly  a  tenth  of  a  mile  away,  there  came  the  happy 
voice  of  a  deckhand  singing  in  the  contentment  of 
a  full  stomach  and  the  beautiful  freshness  of  the 
night.  Not  more  than  a  dozen  paces  from  our  own 
quarters  was  a  narrow  deckhouse  which  ran  the  full 
length  of  the  hatches — ^the  guests'  private  dining- 
room.  It  was  now  ablaze  with  light,  and  here  another 
and  even  greater  surprise  was  in  store  for  those  of 
our  party  who  were  strangers  to  the  hospitality  which 
one  receives  aboard  a  Great  Lakes  freighter.  The 
long  table,  running  nearly  the  length  of  the  room, 
glittered  with  silver,  and  was  decorated  with  fruits 
and  huge  vases  of  fresh  flowers,  and  at  the  head  of 
the  table  stood  the  steward's  wife,   all  smiles  and 


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A  Trip  on  a  Great  Lakes  Freighter       145 

dimples  and  good  cheer,  appointing  us  to  our  seats 
as  we  came  in.  On  these  great  ore  and  grain  and 
coal  carriers  of  the  Inland  Seas,  the  stewards  and 
their  wives,  unlike  those  in  most  other  places,  possess 
responsibilities  other  than  those  of  preparing  and 
serving  food.  They  are,  in  a  way,  the  host  and  hostess 
of  the  guests,  and  must  make  them  comfortable — • 
and  "at  home."  On  a  few  vessels,  like  the  Berwind, 
there  are  both  forward  and  aft  stewards,  with  their 
assistants,  who  in  many  instances  are  their  wives. 
The  forward  steward,  like  our  Mr.  Brooks,  is  the 
chief,  and  buys  for  the  whole  ship  and  watches  that 
the  aft  steward  does  his  work  properly.  Outside 
of  this  he  devotes  himself  entirely  to  the  vessel's 
guests,  and  is  paid  about  one  hundred  dollars  a  month 
and  all  expenses,  while  his  wife  gets  thirty  dollars 
for  doing  it.  So  he  must  be  good.  The  stewards 
of  Lake  freighters  are  usually  those  who  have  "grad- 
uated" ashore,  for  even  the  crews  of  the  Lakes  are 
the  best  fed  people  in  the  world.  Mr.  Brooks,  for 
instance,  had  not  only  won  his  reputation  in  some 
of  the  best  hotels  in  the  land,  but  his  books  on  cook- 
ing are  widely  known,  and  especially  along  the  fresh- 
water highways.  I  mention  these  facts  because  they 
show  another  of  the  little  known  and  unusual  phases 
of  life  in  our  Lake  marine.  For  breakfast,  dinner, 
and  supper  the  tables  in  the  crew's  mess-room  are 
loaded  with  good  things;  very  few  hotels  give  the 
service  that  is  found  in  the  passengers'  dining-room. 


146  The  Great  Lakes 

Thus,  from  the  very  beginning,  one  meets  with 
the  unusual  and  the  surprising  on  board  one  of  these 
big  steel  ships  of  the  Lakes.  While  towns  and  cities 
and  the  ten  thousand  vessels  of  the  seas  are  sweeping 
past,  while  for  a  thousand  miles  the  scenes  are  con- 
stantly changing — from  thickly  populated  country  to 
virgin  wilderness,  from  the  heat  of  summer  on  Erie 
to  the  chill  of  autumn  on  Superior, — ^the  vessel  itself 
remains  a  wonderland  to  the  one  who  has  never 
taken  the  trip  before.  From  the  huge  refrigerator, 
packed  with  the  choicest  meats,  with  gallons  of  olives 
and  relishes,  baskets  of  fruits  and  vegetables — from 
this  to  the  deep  "under- water  dungeons"  where  the 
furnaces  roar  night  and  day  and  where  black  and 
sweating  men  work  like  demons,  something  new  of 
interest  is  always  being  found. 

For  the  first  day,  while  the  steel  decks  are  being 
scrubbed  so  clean  that  one  might  lie  upon  them  with- 
out soiling  himself,  the  passengers  may  spend  every 
hour  in  exploring  the  mysteries  of  the  ship  without 
finding  a  dull  moment.  Under  the  aft  deck-houses, 
where  the  crew  eat  and  sleep,  are  what  the  sailors 
call  the  "bowels  of  the  ship,"  and  here,  as  is  not 
the  case  on  ocean  craft,  the  passenger  may  see  for 
the  first  time  in  his  life  the  wonderful,  almost  ap- 
palling, mechanism  that  drives  a  great  ship  from 
port  to  port,  for  it  must  be  remembered  that  the 
"passenger"  here  is  a  guest — ^the  guest  of  the  owner 
whose  great  private  yacht  the  great  ship  is,  in  a  way, 


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A  Trip  on  a  Great  Lakes  Freighter       147 

and  everything  of  interest  will  be  shown  to  him  if 
he  wishes.  Of  the  bottom  of  this  part  of  the  ship 
the  " brussels-carpet  guest" — as  sailors  call  the  pas- 
senger who  is  taking  a  trip  on  a  freighter  for  the  first 
time — stands  half  in  terror.  There  is  the  dim  light 
of  electricity  down  here,  the  roaring  of  the  furnaces, 
the  creaking  and  groaning  of  the  great  ship,  and 
high  above  one's  head,  an  interminable  distance 
away  it  seems,  one  may  see  where  day  begins.  Every- 
where there  is  the  mmbling  and  crashing  of  machinery, 
the  dizzy  whirling  of  wheels,  the  ceaseless  pumping 
of  steel  arms  as  big  around  as  trees;  and  up  and 
up  and  all  around  there  wind  narrow  stairways  and 
gratings,  on  which  men  creep  and  climb  to  guard 
this  heart  action  of  the  ship's  life.  The  din  is  fearful, 
the  heat  in  the  furnace-room  insufferable,  and  when 
once  each  half-minute  a  furnace  door  is  opened  for 
fresh  fuel,  and  writhing  torrents  of  fire  and  light 
illumine  the  gloomy  depths,  the  tenderfoot  passenger 
looks  up  nervously  to  where  his  eyes  catch  glimpses 
of  light  and  freedom  far  above  him.  And  then,  in 
the  explanation  of  all  this — in  the  reason  for  these 
hundreds  of  tons  of  whirling,  crashing,  thundering 
steel — there  comes  the  greatest  surprise  of  all.  For 
all  of  this  giant  mechanism  is  to  perform  just  one 
thing — and  that  is  to  whirl  and  whirl  and  whirl  an 
insignificant-looking  steel  rod,  which  is  called  a  shaft, 
and  at  the  end  of  which,  in  the  sea  behind  the  ship, 
is  the  screw — a  thing  so  small  that  one  stands   in 


148  The  Great  Lakes 

amazement,  half  doubting  that  this  is  the  instrument 
which  sends  a  ten-thousand-ton  ship  and  ten  thousand 
tons  of  cargo  through  the  sea  at  twelve  miles  an  hour! 
After  this  first  day  of  exploration,  the  real  joyous 
life  of  the  ship  comes  to  one.  Every  hour  of  every 
day  is  one  of  pleasure.  You  are  on  the  only  ship 
in  the  world  into  every  comer  of  which  a  passenger 
is  allowed  to  go.  You  are,  in  so  far  as  your  pleasure 
and  freedom  go,  practically  the  owner  of  the  ship. 
The  crew  and  even  the  captain  may  not  know  but 
what  you  are  one  of  the  owners,  for  nothing  but  your 
name  is  given  to  the  officers  before  you  come  aboard. 
Of  course,  the  steward  has  the  privilege  to  tell  you 
to  keep  out  of  his  kitchen,  and  the  captain  for  you 
to  keep  out  of  the  pilot-house — ^but  they  never  do 
it.  That  guest,  for  instance,  who  haunts  the  pilot- 
house almost  from  morning  to  night,  who  insists 
upon  taking  lessons  in  steering,  and  who  on  any 
other  craft  in  the  world  would  soon  be  told  to  remain 
in  his  cabin  or  mind  his  business,  may  be  a  millionaire 
himself — a  millionaire  who  is  giving  this  line  of  ships 
many  thousands  of  dollars'  worth  of  freight  each  year. 
So  the  captain  and  the  crew  must  be  affable.  But, 
as  I  have  said  before,  this  is  accepted  as  a  pleasure 
and  not  as  a  duty  on  the  Inland  Seas.  I  have  taken 
trips  on  a  score  of  vessels,  and  it  means  much  when 
I  say  that  never  have  I  encountered  an  unpleasant 
captain,  and  that  only  once  did  I  meet  with  a  mate 
who  was  not  pleasant  to  his  passengers. 


A  Trip  on  a  Great  Lakes  Freighter       149 

So,  from  the  first  day  out,  the  big  steel  ship  is 
an  "open  house"  to  its  guests.  Forward  and  aft 
of  the  cabins,  great  awnings  are  stretched,  thick 
rugs  and  carpets  are  spread  upon  the  deck,  and  easy 
chairs  are  scattered  about.  The  captain  and  his 
mates  are  ready  with  the  answers  to  a  thousand 
questions.  They  point  out  objects  and  locations 
of  interest  as  they  are  passed.  There,  in  the  late 
storms  of  last  autumn,  a  ship  went  down  with  all 
on  board;  on  yonder  barren  coast,  five  or  six  miles 
away,  the  captain  guides  your  glasses  to  the  skeleton 
of  a  ship,  whose  tragic  story  he  tells  you;  he  names 
the  lighthouses,  the  points  of  coasts,  and  tells  you 
about  the  scores  of  ships  you  pass  each  day.  He 
shows  you  how  the  wonderful  mechanism  of  the 
ship  is  run  from  the  pilot-house,  and  he  gives  you 
lessons  in  the  points  of  the  compass,  and  perhaps 
lets  you  try  your  hand  at  the  wheel.  And  each  hour, 
if  you  have  been  abroad,  you  see  more  and  more 
how  an  ocean  trip  cannot  be  compared  to  this.  In 
a  preceding  chapter  I  have  described  what  you  see 
and  what  you  pass  in  this  thousand-mile  journey 
to  Duluth;  how  you  slip  from  summer  to  autumn, 
from  the  heart  of  the  nation's  population  to  vast, 
silent  wildernesses  where  the  bear  and  the  wolf  roam 
unmolested;  how  great  cities  give  place  to  mining 
and  lumber  camps,  and  you  come  into  the  great 
northern  lake  where  darkness  does  not  settle  until 
after  nine  o'clock  at  night. 


150  The  Great  Lakes 

But  these  are  not  the  only  things  which  make 
a  trip  on  a  Great  Lakes  freighter  interesting.  It 
is  what  you  can  do.  There  are  a  dozen  games  you 
can  play,  from  hatch-bag  to  shuffle-board;  there 
is  music  and  reading,  eating  and  drinking — for  the 
steward  is  constantly  alive  to  your  wants,  always 
alive  to  add  to  your  pleasures.  And  there  is  excite- 
ment— if  not  of  one  kind  then  of  another.  You  may 
be  thrilled  by  the  sudden  alarm  of  fare  aboard  ship, 
and  find  yourself  burning  with  relief  when  you  dis- 
cover that  you  are  witnessing  nothing  but  an  exciting 
fire  drill;  it  may  be  a  wrestling  or  boxing  match 
between  two  of  the  ship's  champions,  a  race  over 
the  steel  hatches,  or — something  like  the  following 
incident : 

One  of  the  greatest  sources  of  entertainment  for 
guests  aboard  a  Lake  freighter  is  in  the  study  of 
the  men  and  boys  of  the  crew,  for  the  average  crew 
of  twenty-five  or  thirty  always  possesses  some  odd 
characters.  Our  party  was  very  much  amused  by  one 
individual,  a  youth  of  about  twenty,  large,  round-faced, 
full-fed,  a  young  man  of  unbounded  good  humour 
whose  two  great  joys  in  life  were  his  meals — and 
sleep.  This  youth  never  lost  an  opportunity  to  take 
a  nap.  After  his  dinner  in  the  mess-room,  he  would 
promptly  fall  into  a  doze  in  his  chair,  to  be  aroused 
by  a  dash  of  cold  water  or  some  other  practical  joker's 
trick;  if  he  sat  down  on  a  hatch  he  would  sleep;  he 
would    fall    asleep    leaning    against   the    cabin.      His 


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A  Trip  on  a  Great  Lakes  Freighter        151 

actions  caused  no  little  uneasiness  on  the  part  of 
the  captain,  who  liked  the  boy  immensely.  "  Some 
day  he  will  fall  asleep  and  topple  overboard,"  he 
said. 

We  had  come  into  Superior,  where  the  clear,  dry 
air  exerts  a  peculiar  effect  upon  one.  Coming  sud- 
denly from  the  warm  atmosphere  of  the  Lower  Lakes 
a  person  has  difficulty  in  keeping  his  eyes  open  half 
of  the  time  up  there.  We  were  off  Keweenaw  Point 
when  the  thrilling  alarm  was  spread  that  *' Dopey," 
the  sleepy  youth,  had  fallen  overboard.  The  aft 
steward  brought  the  news  forward.  Billy  had  eaten 
a  huge  dinner  and  was  taking  a  comfortable  siesta 
standing,  half  leaning  over  the  aft  rail.  A  moment 
after  passing  him  the  steward  returned,  bent  upon 
stirring  the  boy  from  his  dangerous  position,  and 
found  him  gone.  The  vessel  was  searched  from  stem 
to  stem.  Even  the  passengers  joined  in  the  hunt. 
But  there  was  found  no  sign  of  the  missing  youth, 
and  a  deep  gloom  fell  upon  the  people  of  the  ship. 
An  hour  later,  one  of  the  young  ladies  approached 
the  steep,  narrow  stair  that  led  down  into  the  forward 
locker.  The  mate  himself  had  searched  this  gloomy 
nook  for  Billy.  I  was  a  dozen  feet  behind  the  girl 
and  she  turned  to  me  with  a  white,  startled  face. 
"Come  here — quick!"  she  cried.  "Listen!" 
Together  we  bent  our  heads  over  the  opening — 
and  up  to  our  ears  there  came  a  mysterious  sound 
now  so  low  that  we  could  hardly  hear  it,  then  louder — 


152  The  Great  Lakes 

something  that  for  a  moment  held  us  speechless  and 
set  our  hearts  beating  at  double-quick.  It  was  the 
snoring  of  a  sleeping  person!  In  another  instant 
we  were  down  in  that  dingy  hole  of  ropes  and  cables 
and  anchor  chains,  and  there,  curled  up  in  the  gloom, 
we  found  Billy,  sleeping  a  sleep  so  sound  that  it  took 
a  good  shaking  to  awaken  him.  On  deck  he  explained 
the  mystery.  The  passing  of  the  steward  aft  had 
aroused  him  from  his  nap  against  the  rail,  and  he 
had  wandered  forward,  seeking  the  cool  seclusion 
of  the  locker. 

While  this  little  affair  did  not  end  in  a  tragedy, 
I  give  it  as  an  illustration  of  the  fact  that  something 
of  interest,  if  not  excitement,  is  constantly  occurring 
to  keep  the  guests  of  a  Great  Lakes  freighter  alive 
to  the  possibilities  of  the  trip.  The  night  following 
Billy's  mysterious  disappearance,  for  instance,  the 
two  young  ladies  aboard  our  ship  nearly  brought 
about  a  mutiny.  Before  going  into  the  details  of 
this  incident,  it  is  necessary  for  me  to  repeat  what 
I  have  said  in  a  preceding  paragraph — that  the  sea- 
men of  our  Lakes  are  the  best  fed  working  people 
in  the  world.  If  a  captain  does  not  provide  the  best 
of  meats  and  vegetables  and  fruits,  and  in  sufficient 
quantities,  he  may  find  himself  minus  a  crew  when 
he  reaches  port.  One  day  as  I  was  leaning  over  the 
aft  rail  the  steward  approached  me  and  said: 
"Do  you  see  that  ship  off  there?" 
He  pointed  to  a  big  down-bound  freighter. 


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A  Trip  on  a  Great  Lakes  Freighter        153 

"Notice  anything  peculiar  about  it?"  he  con- 
tinued. 

I  confessed  that  I  did  not. 

"Well,  this  is  the  noon  hour,"  he  went  on,  "and 
the  sea-gulls  always  know  when  it  's  feeding  time. 
But  there  are  no  gulls  following  that  ship.  There 
are  a  good  many  more  ships  in  that  same  line — and 
there  's  never  a  gull  behind  them.  Do  you  know 
why?  It  's  because  the  grub  on  those  boats  is  so 
poor.  The  gulls  have  learned  to  tell  them  as  far  as 
they  can  see  'em,  and  they  won't  have  anything  to 
do  with  'em,  and  that  's  the  Lord's  truth,  sir!  Any 
man  on  the  Lakes  will  tell  you  so,  and  the  men  on 
those  boats  most  of  all.  They  don't  take  a  job  there 
until  they're  down  and  out  and  can't  get  work  any- 
where else." 

On  the  afternoon  of  Billy's  adventure,  the  young 
lady  who  discovered  him  was  taken  slightly  ill  and 
was  not  present  at  dinner.  Late  that  night,  however, 
she  was  much  improved — and  ravenously  hungry. 
As  the  steward  and  his  wife  were  in  bed  there  was 
no  chance  of  getting  anything  to  eat  forward.  In 
some  way  the  girl  had  learned  that  a  part  of  the  crew, 
who  were  in  the  night  watch,  had  luncheon  in  the 
aft  mess-room  at  midnight,  and  this  young  lady 
and  her  chum,  and  the  three  young  men  in  the  party, 
planned  to  wait  until  after  that  hour  and  then,  stealing 
quietly  aft,  help  themselves  to  the  "leavings."  At 
twelve-thirty,  the  decks  were  dark  and  silent,  with 


154  The  Great  Lakes 

the  watch  ahead  of  the  forward  deck-houses,  and  the 
young  people  made  their  way  unobserved  to  the 
mess-room.  Not  a  soul  was  about,  and  on  the  table 
was  meat  and  cake  and  pickles,  and  a  huge  pot 
of  coffee  was  simmering  on  the  range.  The  five 
helped  themselves.  No  one  interrupted  them,  and 
when  fifteen  or  twenty  minutes  later  they  slipped 
back  to  their  quarters  the  table  was  pretty  well  cleaned. 
Now  it  just  happened  that  the  night  men,  instead 
of  eating  at  midnight,  ate  at  one — an  hour  later, 
and  when  they  came  in  after  six  hours  of  hard  work, 
tired  and  hungry,  only  the  wreck  of  what  should 
have  been,  greeted  their  astonished  eyes.  The  men 
were  in  a  rage.  They  had  been  imposed  upon  as 
no  self-respecting,  liberty-loving  man  of  the  Lakes 
will  allow  himself  to  be  imposed  upon — in  the  way 
of  food;  and  it  took  the  combined  efforts  of  the  two 
stewards  and  their  wives,  and  the  humble  apologies 
of  the  three  young  men,  to  straighten  the  affair  out. 
Thereafter,  at  midnight,  the  mess-room  door  was 
locked. 

The  more  one  comes  in  touch  and  sympathy  with 
the  lives  of  these  men  of  the  Lakes  the  more  one's 
interest  increases;  and  it  is  not  until  one  eats  and 
drinks  with  them  aft,  and  secures  their  confidence 
and  friendship,  that  he  is  let  into  the  secrets  of  the 
inner  and  home  life  of  these  red-blooded  people, 
which  is  unlike  the  life  of  any  other  seafaring  men 
in  the  world.     It  is  when  this  confidence  and  friend- 


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A  Trip  on  a  Great  Lakes  Freighter        155 

ship  is  won  that  you  begin  to  reap  the  full  pleasure 
of  a  trip  on  a  Great  Lakes  freighter;  it  is  then  that 
the  romance,  the  picturesqueness,  and  the  super- 
stition of  the  Lake  breed  creep  out.  Not  until  that 
time,  for  instance,  will  you  discover  that  these  rough 
strong  men  of  the  Lakes  are  the  most  indomitable 
home-owners  in  the  world.  A  home  is  their  ambition, 
the  goal  toward  which  they  constantly  work.  From 
the  deckhand  to  the  young,  unmarried  mate  it  is  the 
reward  of  all  their  labour,  the  end  for  which  they  are 
all  striving.  And  there  are  good  reasons  for  this — 
reasons  which  have  made  the  "home  instinct"  among 
Lake  sailors  almost  a  matter  of  heredity.  The  ships  of 
the  Inland  Seas  are  almost  constantly  in  sight  of  land. 
Now  it  is  a  long  stretch  of  coast  a  mile  or  so  away; 
again  it  is  a  point  stretching  out  to  sea,  or  the  shores 
of  some  of  the  most  beautiful  streams  in  America. 
And  wherever  there  is  land  within  shouting  or  meg- 
aphone or  "whistle"  distance  of  the  passing  vessels, 
there  nestle  the  little  homes  of  those  who  run  the 
ships  of  our  fresh- water  marine.  It  may  be  that 
for  an  entire  season  of  seven  or  eight  months  the 
Lake  sailor  has  no  opportunity  of  visiting  his  family. 
Yet  every  week  or  so  he  sees  his  home  and  his  wife 
and  children  from  the  deck  of  his  ship.  It  is  easy 
for  those  ashore  to  learn  from  the  marine  officers 
when  a  certain  vessel  is  due  to  pass,  and  at  that  hour 
wives  and  sweethearts,  friends  and  children,  assemble 
on  the  shore  to  bid  their  loved  ones  Godspeed.    All 


156  The  Great  Lakes 

of  the  vessels  on  the  Lakes  have  their  private  code 
of  signals.  Perhaps  in  the  still  hours  of  night,  the 
sleeping  wife  is  aroused  by  the  deep,  distant  roar 
of  the  freighter's  voice.  For  a  moment  she  listens, 
and  it  comes  again — and  from  out  there  in  the  night 
she  knows  that  her  husband  is  talking  to  her;  and 
the  husband,  his  eyes  turned  longingly  ashore,  sees 
a  light  suddenly  flash  in  the  darkness,  and  his  heart 
grows  lighter  and  happier  in  this  token  of  love  and 
faith  that  has  come  to  him.  And  in  the  hours  of 
day  it  is  more  beautiful  still;  and  the  passengers 
and  crew  draw  away,  leaving  the  man  alone  at  the 
rail,  while  the  wife  holds  up  their  baby  for  the  father 
to  see,  and  throws  him  kisses;  and  there  is  the  silence 
of  voiceless,  breathless  suspense  on  the  deck  that 
the  faint  voice  of  the  woman,  or  the  happy  cries  of 
the  children,  may  reach  the  husband  and  father, 
whose  words  thunder  back  in  megaphone  greeting. 
It  is  beautiful  and  yet  it  is  pathetic,  this  constant 
union  of  the  people  of  the  Lake  breed.  And  the 
pathos  comes  mostly  when  there  is  no  answer  from 
the  little  home  ashore,  for  it  is  then  that  visions  of 
sickness,  of  misfortune,  and  possibly  of  neglect  cast 
their  gloom. 

In  a  hundred  other  ways  that  I  might  describe 
does  one  see  life  on  a  Great  Lakes  freighter  as  on 
none  of  the  vessels  of  the  salt  seas.  It  is  a  life  dis- 
tinct from  all  others,  a  life  that  is  building  a  people 
within  itself — the  people  of  the  Lake  breed. 


PART  II 


Origin  and  History  of  the  Lakes 


Origin  and  Early  History 

WHILE  the  modern  romance  of  the  Great 
Lakes,  the  vast  commerce  that  has  grown 
upon  them,  the  great  cities  along  their 
shores,  and  the  part  they  have  played  in  the 
history  of  the  last  generation  form,  to  my  mind, 
one  of  the  most  absorbing  and  at  the  same  time 
one  of  the  most  fruitful  subjects  for  the  writer  of 
to-day,  it  is  to  the  "dim  and  mysterious  ages  of 
long  ago"  that  one  must  allow  his  imagination  to 
be  carried,  if  he  would  understand,  in  its  fullest  meas- 
ure, the  part  that  our  Inland  Seas  should  hold  within 
the  hearts  of  the  American  people.  It  has  been  my 
desire,  in  this  volume,  to  establish  between  our  people 
and  our  Lakes  that  bond  of  friendship  which  un- 
fortunately has  never  existed  except  upon  their  very 
shores.  In  the  years  in  which  I  have  studied  the 
Lakes,  their  commerce,  and  their  people,  I  have 
been  astonished  at  the  dearth  of  material  which 
has  been  published  about  them,  and  not  until  this 
discovery  came  upon  me  forcefully  did  I  understand 

that  our  own  glorious  Inland  Seas,  holding  in  per- 

159 


i6o  The  Great  Lakes 

petual  inheritance  for  the  American  people  one  half 
of  the  fresh  water  of  the  whole  globe,  are,  indeed, 
"aliens  in  the  land  of  their  birth." 

For  this  reason,  I  am  adding  to  my  preceding 
chapters  a  brief  history  of  the  Lakes.  It  is  not  what 
might  be  called  a  history  in  detail,  for  such  a  story 
of  the  Inland  Seas  would  fill  volumes  in  itself.  No 
other  portion  of  the  globe  has  been  fraught  with 
more  incident  of  historical  and  romantic  interest 
than  these  fresh-water  heritages  of  our  nation.  The 
dramas  that  have  been  played  upon  them  or  along 
their  shores  would  fill  libraries.  Their  unrevealed 
pages  of  romance  and  tragedy  would  furnish  rich 
material  for  the  writers  of  a  century.  About  them 
lie  the  dust  of  three  quarters  of  the  aboriginal  in- 
habitants of  North  America.  Along  their  shores 
were  fought  some  of  the  world's  most  relentless  wars 
of  absolute  extermination.  Upon  their  waters  oc- 
curred the  most  romantic  adventures  of  the  early 
exploration  of  the  continent.  Every  mile  of  these 
waters,  now  clouded  with  the  smoke  of  a  gigantic 
commerce,  is  fraught  with  the  deepest  historical 
interest.  And  yet,  as  I  write  this,  there  comes  to 
my  mind  a  thought  of  those  countless  thousands 
of  Americans  who,  travelling  afar  for  their  pleasures, 
seek  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe  that  their  feet 
may  tread  in  awesome  respect  upon  spots  hallowed 
because  of  their  historical  associations,  whether  those 
associations  be  of  fact,  of  legend,  or  of  song. 


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Origin  and  Early  History  i6i 

The  romance  of  the  Lakes  does  not  begin  with  their 
early  discoverers ;  neither  does  it  begin  with  the  primi- 
tive inhabitants  along  their  shores.  It  dawns  with  their 
making.  Unniimbered  thousands  of  years  ago,  before 
the  glaciers  of  the  Ice  Age  crept  over  the  continent; 
when  prehistoric  monsters,  still  living  in  a  tropical 
world,  roamed  throughout  what  is  now  the  Lake 
region;  and  when  man,  if  he  existed  at  all,  was  in 
his  crudest  form,  the  Great  Lakes  were  still  unborn. 
Where  their  ninety-five  thousand  square  miles  of 
surface  now  afford  the  world's  greatest  highways 
of  water  commerce  there  were  then  vast  areas  of 
plain,  of  highland  and  plateau,  rising  at  times  to  the 
eminence  of  mountains.  Those  were  the  days  when 
the  North  American  continent  was  completing  itself, 
when  the  last  handiwork  in  the  creation  of  a  world 
was  in  progress.  In  place  of  the  Lakes  there  were 
then  a  number  of  great  rivers  in  these  regions — 
rivers,  which  despite  the  passing  of  ages,  have  left 
their  channels  and  their  marks  to  this  day.  These 
rivers  were  all  of  one  system  and  were  all  tributary 
to  one  great  stream,  the  Laurentian  River,  whose 
channel  to  the  sea  was  that  of  the  St.  Lawrence  of 
to-day.  Were  it  possible  for  one  to  conceive  himself 
back  in  those  primitive  times  a  journey  over  this 
first  great  river  system  of  the  continent  would  have 
carried  him,  first  of  all,  from  the  still  unfinished  ocean 
along  the  south  shore  of  what  is  now  Lake  Ontario. 
He  would  have  travelled  within  ten  miles  of  where 


1 62  The  Great  Lakes 

scores  of  towns  and  cities  now  flourish,  and  almost 
directly  opposite  what  is  now  the  Niagara  River 
he  woidd  have  encountered  another  great  stream 
pouring  into  the  Laurent ian  from  the  south  and 
west.  This  river  continued  almost  through  the  middle 
of  what  is  now  Lake  Erie,  and  opposite  where  San- 
dusky is  now  situated  divided  itself  into  two  branches, 
which  still  exist  in  the  Maumee  and  the  Detroit. 
The  Laurentian  continued  northward  close  along 
the  southern  shore  of  Georgian  Bay,  turned  south- 
ward to  the  centre  of  the  Lake  Huron  basin,  where 
the  Huronian  River,  sweeping  across  central  Mich- 
igan, joined  it  from  Saginaw  Bay.  The  Laurentian 
itself  passed  northward  through  the  Straits  of  Mack- 
inaw and  terminated  in  what  is  now  Lake  Michigan. 
The  story  of  this  vast  water  system  has  been  left 
in  clearly  defined  outlines;  its  indelible  marks  are 
ancient  valleys,  sand-filled  channels  of  the  great 
streams,  and  worn  escarpments.  Seldom  has  science 
had  an  easier  story  to  read  of  ages  that  are  gone. 
Then  came  the  second  step  in  the  creating  of  the 
Lakes  of  to-day.  Slowly  life  changed  as  the  Glacial 
Age  approached,  and  with  the  sweeping  back  of 
life  the  rivers,  too,  passed  out  of  existence.  During 
the  slow  passing  of  centuries,  their  channels  were 
filled,  and  the  valleys  were  obstructed  with  drift, 
so  that  when  the  Ice  Age  had  come  and  gone  their 
channels  no  longer  ran  clear  and  unobstructed  to 
the  sea.     As  a  consequence,   great   areas  were  sub- 


Origin  and  Early  History  163 

merged,  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  square  miles 
of  what  is  now  fertile  land,  populated  by  millions 
and  dotted  by  cities,  became  an  ocean.  But  the 
continent  was  still  in  process  of  formation.  The 
land  in  the  Lake  region  began  to  rise,  and  continued 
in  its  elevation  until  out  of  the  choas  of  sea  the  Lakes 
were  formed.  To  the  north-east,  as  the  centre  of 
the  continent  rose,  there  was  a  tilting  of  the  land 
oceanward,  and  this  warping  dropped  Lake  Ontario 
below  the  level  of  the  other  Lakes,  thus  interposing 
a  barrier  to  free  communication  to  the  sea  and  giving 
birth  to  Niagara  Falls. 

In  this  way,  so  far  as  science  can  tell,  the  Great 
Lakes  of  to-day  were  brought  into  existence.  How 
early  human  life  existed  along  their  shores  it  is  im- 
possible even  to  guess,  but  that  the  earliest  life  of 
the  continent  should  first  of  all  gather  in  the  valleys 
of  the  vast  water  system  that  gave  them  birth,  and 
afterward  reassemble  along  their  shores,  is  highly 
probable.  The  earliest  discoverers  to  penetrate  into 
the  wildernesses  of  the  West  found  these  shores 
inhabited  by  powerful  nations.  Other  nations  were 
facing  extermination.  Still  others  had  ceased  to 
exist  and  were  forgotten  except  in  legend.  Along 
the  Inland  Seas  have  been  found  evidences  of  a  superior 
race  to  the  warlike  aborigines  of  the  days  of  La  SaUe. 
But  only  these  evidences,  utensils  of  copper  and 
stone  and  clay,  remain  as  proof  of  their  existence. 
What   they   were,   when   they  lived,   and   how  they 


164  The  Great  Lakes 

died,  is  one  of  the  mysteries  that  will  remain  forever 
unsolved. 

By  the  time  the  known  history  of  the  Lakes  really 
begins  their  inhabitants  had  degenerated  into  war- 
like, ferocious  savages,  bent  upon  battle  and  exter- 
mination, and  for  the  most  part  constantly  embroiled 
in  war  of  one  kind  or  another.  From  Lake  Ontario 
to  the  end  of  Superior  the  Lake  regions  were  one 
great  battle-ground,  and  this  sanguinary  history  had 
extended  so  far  into  the  past  that  with  the  coming 
of  the  first  French  explorers  the  Indians  could  give 
no  comprehensive  idea  of  when  it  had  begun.  At 
this  time,  early  in  the  seventeenth  century,  the  Lake 
country  was  the  bone  of  contention  among  three 
quarters  of  the  aborigines  of  North  America.  There 
was  hardly  a  tribe  that  was  not  fighting  some  one 
of  its  neighbours,  and  the  remnants  of  vanquished 
nations  were  constantly  fleeing  from  their  enemies 
and  escaping  total  extermination  by  seeking  safety 
in  the  West  and  South.  In  Northern  Michigan  and 
in  Wisconsin  there  lived  three  branches  of  the  Algon- 
quin tribe,  the  Ottawas,  the  Ojibwas,  and  the  Pot- 
tawatomies.  The  Ottawas  had  been  driven  westward, 
and  the  Ojibwas  at  this  time  were  invading  the  hunting 
grounds  of  the  Crees,  who  were  entrenched  on  the 
northern  shore  of  Lake  Superior,  their  territory  ex- 
tending northward  to  Hudson  Bay.  On  their  west, 
the  Ojibwas  were  also  at  war  with  the  powerful 
Dakotas,  who,  fighting  eastward  from  the  Mississippi, 


Origin  and  Early  History  165 

had  secured  a  foothold  on  Superior.  To  the  eastward, 
encroaching  upon  the  tribes  of  Lake  Ontario,  were 
the  Iroquois,  or  Five  Nations,  consisting  of  the  Mo- 
hawks, Oneidas,  Onondagas,  Cayugas,  and  the  Sen- 
ecas.  Between  these  and  the  fierce  Algonquins  of 
the  Upper  Lakes  were  wedged  the  Hurons  and  the 
Eries,  fighting  vainly  against  the  almost  total  ex- 
termination which  became  their  fate  a  little  later. 
It  was  in  the  war  between  1650  and  1655  that  both 
the  Eries  and  the  Neuters,  on  the  southern  shore 
of  Lake  Erie,  were  wiped  out  of  existence  by  the 
Iroquois,  and  it  was  about  this  same  time  that  the 
Hurons  received  their  death-blow.  The  few  that  escaped 
fled  to  the  Mississippi  and  promptly  became  involved 
in  a  war  with  the  Sioux.  Reduced  to  a  pitiable  rem- 
nant the  once  powerful  Sacs  and  Foxes  were  awaiting 
their  end  along  Green  Bay. 

In  these  days,  the  Lakes  were  already  playing 
a  part  in  commerce  as  well  as  in  war.  Great  fleets 
of  Indian  canoes  made  annual  voyages  from  the 
Upper  to  the  Lower  Lakes,  and  war  fleets  were  com- 
mon spectacles  from  almost  every  coast.  The  greatest 
of  these  fleets,  so  far  as  is  known,  was  that  of  the 
Iroquois,  which  in  1680  carried  six  himdred  selected 
braves  across  Lake  Erie,  up  the  Detroit  River,  through 
Lake  St.  Clair,  Lake  Huron,  the  Straits  of  Mackinaw, 
and  down  to  the  foot  of  Lake  Michigan,  where  the 
adventurous  navigators  were  utterly  repulsed  by 
the  warriors  of  the  Illinois.     Another  Iroquois  fleet 


1 66  The  Great  Lakes 

was  annihilated  near  Iroquois  Point,  in  Lake  Huron. 
In  1600,  according  to  stories  told  by  the  Indians, 
a  fierce  naval  battle  in  which  several  hundred  war 
canoes  were  engaged  was  fought  in  the  middle  of  Lake 
Erie  by  the  Wyandots  and  the  Senecas.  Only  one 
Seneca  canoe  escaped. 

It  was  at  this  time,  when  the  Lake  country  and 
the  Lakes  themselves  were  the  stage  upon  which 
were  being  played  the  most  thrilling  dramas  of  ab- 
original history,  that  the  Inland  Seas  were  first  visited 
by  their  white  discoverers.  In  161 5,  the  Franciscan 
friar,  Joseph  Le  Caron,  in  company  with  three  other 
Franciscans  and  twelve  Frenchmen,  invaded  the 
seat  of  the  Huron  nation  on  Matchedash  Bay,  where 
Champlain  joined  him  a  few  days  later.  The  Hurons 
were  preparing  to  attack  their  old  enemies,  the  Iro- 
quois, and  Champlain  accompanied  them  on  their 
expedition.  The  campaign  was  unsuccessful  but 
it  led  to  the  Frenchman's  discovery  of  Lake  Ontario. 
Stephen  Brule,  an  unlettered  and  reckless  adventurer, 
was  the  first  white  man  to  rest  eyes  upon  Lake  Su- 
perior, his  voyage  up  Lake  Huron  being  made  some 
time  in  1629.  Brule,  however,  was  more  interested 
in  ingots  of  copper  which  he  found  than  in  the  greatest 
body  of  fresh  water  on  the  globe,  and  he  returned 
south  almost  immediately,  while  it  was  left  for  Raym- 
bault  and  Jogues,  two  hopeful  missionaries  in  search 
of  a  passage  to  China,  to  make  the  first  navigation 
of  Superior.    This  they  did  in  1641.    Five  years  after 


Origin  and  Early  History  167 

Brule's  discovery,  another  adventurer,  Jean  Nicolet, 
paddled  in  a  birch  canoe  from  Georgian  Bay  across 
Lake  Huron  and  through  the  Straits  of  Mackinaw, 
and  thus  discovered  Lake  Michigan.  As  surprising 
as  it  may  seem,  Erie  was  the  last  of  the  Great  Lakes 
to  be  found  by  white  men,  and  although  its  existence 
was  known  to  the  French  as  early  as  1640,  it  was 
not  until  1669  that  Joliet,  its  discoverer,  made  his 
voyage  upon  it. 

The  situation  as  it  existed  in  the  entire  Lake  country 
at  the  time  of  the  coming  of  these  first  explorers 
was  so  unreasonably  tragic  that,  viewed  from  the 
present  day,  it  approaches  dangerously  near  to  having 
a  touch  of  the  comic  about  it.  As  one  early  writer 
says,  "It  was  as  if  a  pack  of  dogs  were  fighting  over 
a  bone.  Only — where  was  the  bone?"  There  was 
hardly  an  Indian  tribe  that  was  not  at  war  with 
some  other  tribe,  and  in  most  instances,  according 
to  the  discoverers,  there  were  no  evident  causes  for 
the  sanguinary  conflicts.  "  It  was  as  if  all  the  savages 
were  impelled  by  a  bad  spirit,  and  a  rage  of  exter- 
mination was  sweeping  over  the  land,"  wrote  one 
of  the  early  Fathers.  It  is  a  popular  superstition 
that  the  extinction  of  the  red  man  must  be  ascribed 
to  the  coming  of  the  white,  but  nothing  shows  more 
graphically  the  error  of  this  belief  than  these  condi- 
tions of  the  seventeenth  century  in  the  Lake  coun- 
try. The  aborigines  were  exterminating  themselves. 
They  were   doing  the  work  completely,   mercilessly. 


1 68  The  Great  Lakes 

Nations  had  already  been  put  out  of  existence.  The 
Eries  and  Neuters  were  but  lately  annihilated.  The 
once  powerful  Hurons  were  reduced  to  a  remnant. 
The  Sacs  and  Foxes  were  doomed.  Existing  tribes 
were  weakened  and  scattered  by  ceaseless  war.  And 
sweeping  down  from  the  east  the  all-powerful  Iro- 
quois, the  Romans  of  the  wilderness,  were  coming 
each  year  to  add  to  the  completeness  of  the  exter- 
mination. 

Now  came  the  whites,  and  with  their  presence 
there  developed  slowly  a  check  to  the  indiscriminate 
slaughter.  At  no  time  in  the  world  was  the  missionary 
spirit  more  active,  and  scores  of  the  disciples  of  the 
Church  plunged  fearlessly  into  the  wilderness  of 
the  Lake  regions,  daring  their  perils  of  starvation 
and  torture  and  death  that  the  word  of  God  might 
reach  the  hearts  of  the  savages.  And  with  them 
there  came  hundreds  of  adventurous  spirits,  trappers 
employed  by  the  "Hundred  Associates,"  fortune- 
hunters,  and  reckless  souls  who  had  no  other  object 
than  the  excitement  of  exploration  and  discovery, 
but  all  of  whom  were  staunch  Catholics.  The  very 
fearlessness  of  these  white  invaders  acted  as  a  governor 
on  the  hostile  energies  of  the  savages,  and  their  in- 
terests, in  a  small  way  at  first,  began  to  be  diverted 
into  other  channels  than  those  of  war.  Among  the 
neutral  nations  on  the  Niagara  River,  Father  Joseph 
de  la  Roche  d'Aillon  formed  a  mission  early  in  the 
seventeenth  century.    As  early  as  1615,  the  Recollects 


o 


o 


Origin  and  Early  History  169 

had  established  a  mission  among  the  Hurons,  which 
was  later  continued  by  the  Jesuits.  For  more  than 
thirty  years,  the  missionaries  had  labotired  among 
the  Hurons  when,  in  1648,  the  Senecas  and  Mohawks 
fell  upon  their  country,  razed  twenty  of  their  villages, 
killed  most  of  their  3000  fighters,  and  totally  de- 
stroyed them  as  a  people.  Two  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers, 
Brebeuf  and  Daniel,  gave  up  their  lives  in  the  fearful 
massacres  of  those  days.  It  was  only  five  years  later 
that  the  Iroquois,  destroyers  of  the  Hurons,  requested 
the  French  to  send  missionaries  among  them,  and 
for  nearly  twenty  years  the  zealous  Jesuits  brought 
about  a  lull  in  the  sanguinary  conflicts  of  the  Five 
Nations,  but  at  the  end  of  that  time  when  war  flamed 
out  anew  they  were  compelled  to  abandon  their 
missions.  Meanwhile,  along  the  Upper  Lakes,  the 
missionary  movement  was  being  prosecuted  with 
extreme  vigour.  Garreau  and  Claude  Allouez,  with 
other  missionaries,  worked  along  the  shores  of  Su- 
perior, establishing  missions  among  the  Sacs  and  Foxes 
and  Pottawatomies.  In  1668,  Marquette  established 
his  famous  mission  at  Sault  Ste.  Marie,  and  three 
years  later  founded  the  mission  of  St.  Ignace  on  the 
Straits  of  Mackinaw. 

It  would  take  a  volume  to  describe  the  adventures 
of  these  early  Fighters  of  the  Faith,  their  trials 
and  sacrifices,  their  successes  and  failures.  The  brief- 
ness of  our  sketch  compels  us  to  move  quickly  from 
these   absorbing   scenes   to   the   first   great  event  in 


170  The  Great  Lakes 

the  history  of  Lake  navigation,  and  to  the  beginning 
of  that  encroachment  of  the  English  which  was  to 
develop  a  hundred  years  of  war  along  the  Inland 
Seas.  While  the  Jesuit  Fathers  were  sacrificing 
their  lives  among  the  savages  and  while  the  Indian 
wars  of  extermination  were  still  in  progress,  the 
French  farther  east  had  already  begun  to  feel  the 
hostile  influence  of  the  English.  To  check  this  in- 
fluence La  Salle  and  Count  Frontenac  brought  about 
the  erection  of  Fort  Frontenac,  in  1673,  ^^  "the  present 
site  of  Kingston.  At  this  time,  Robert  Cavelier, 
Sieur  de  la  Salle,  a  young  man  of  eminence  and  learn- 
ing, was  of  the  supreme  faith  that  he  was  destined 
to  discover  a  water  passage  through  the  American 
continent  to  China  and  Japan,  and  the  building  of 
Fort  Frontenac  was  only  the  first  step  in  the  gigantic 
scheme  which  he  planned  to  carry  out.  A  part  of 
this  scheme  was  the  building  of  a  vessel  of  considerable 
size  in  which  La  Salle  planned  not  only  to  make  a 
complete  tour  of  the  Lakes  but  in  which  he  hoped 
to  discover  the  route  that  would  lead  to  the  Orient. 
Five  years  later,  the  young  adventurer  made  the 
portage  around  Niagara  Falls,  and  at  the  mouth  of 
Cayuga  Creek,  in  Niagara  County,  New  York,  where 
is  now  located  the  town  of  La  Salle,  he  began  the 
construction  of  the  first  vessel  ever  to  sail  the  Inland 
Seas. 

There  are  different  estimates  as  to  the  size  of  the 
ship,  but  that  it  was  somewhere  between  fifty  and 


Origin  and  Early  History  171 

sixty  tons  there  is  little  doubt.  Assisting  in  this 
work  were  Tonty  and  Hennepin,  and  it  took  all  of 
the  persuasive  powers  of  the  three  to  keep  the  Griffin, 
as  the  vessel  had  been  named,  from  the  hostile  hands 
of  the  Senecas  as  she  lay  in  her  stocks.  The  ship, 
when  launched,  was  completely  rigged,  found  with 
supplies  for  a  long  voyage,  and  armed  by  seven  pieces 
of  cannon  and  a  quantity  of  muskets.  She  carried 
two  masts  and  a  jib,  and  was  decorated  with  the 
usual  ornaments  of  an  ancient  ship  of  war,  including 
a  flying  griffin  at  the  jib-boom  and  a  huge  eagle  aft. 
For  hundreds  of  miles  about,  the  Indians  came  to 
see  this  wonderful  "floating  fort"  before  she  set 
sail.  Thirty-two  souls  were  to  form  the  crew  of  the 
Griffin  in  her  adventurous  search  for  the  route  to 
Cathay,  and  on  the  day  that  she  turned  her  prow 
up  the  Niagara  River,  La  Salle  and  his  followers 
fell  upon  their  knees,  invoking  upon  themselves  the 
mercies  of  God  in  an  undertaking  which,  they  believed, 
was  to  be  one  of  the  most  venturesome  of  their  age. 
With  all  on  board  singing  the  Te  Deum  Laudamus, 
the  Griffin  passed  into  Lake  Erie,  and  while  at  the 
sight  of  the  great  water  ahead  of  them  the  priests 
again  invoked  the  blessings  of  God,  the  first  ship 
to  sail  the  Lakes  boldly  headed  into  those  "vast 
and  unknown  seas  of  which  even  their  savage  in- 
habitants knew  not  the  end." 

According  to  the  historian   Hennepin,  who  was  a 
member  of  the  expedition,   days  and  nights  of  the 


172  The  Great  Lakes 

wildest  speculation,  of  hope,  of  fear,  and  of  anxious 
anticipation  now  followed.  Rumour  filled  the  seas 
ahead  of  them  with  innumerable  perils.  The  hardy 
navigators  knew  not  at  what  instant  destruction 
might  overtake  them  in  any  one  of  a  dozen  ways 
in  which  they  supposed  themselves  to  be  threatened. 
Each  morning  and  night  the  entire  crew  joined  in 
prayers  and  in  singing  the  hymns  of  the  Church. 
Lake  Erie  was  crossed  in  safety,  and  on  the  eleventh 
of  August  the  Griffin  entered  the  Detroit  River. 
Hennepin  was  enthralled  with  its  wonderful  beauty. 
"The  river  was  thirty  leagues  long,"  he  says,  "bor- 
dered by  low  and  level  banks,  and  navigable  through- 
out its  entire  length.  On  either  side  were  vast  prairies, 
extending  back  to  hills  covered  with  vines,  fruit 
trees,  thickets,  and  tall  forest  trees,  so  distributed 
as  to  seem  rather  the  work  of  art  than  nature."  Pass- 
ing between  Grosse  Isle  and  Bois  Blanc  Island,  the 
Griffin  sailed  slowly  up  the  river,  frequent  stops 
being  made  along  its  course;  it  passed  the  present 
site  of  Detroit,  and  on  the  day  of  the  festival  of  Saint 
Claire  the  navigators  entered  the  lake  which  they 
gave  that  name.  On  the  twenty-third  of  August, 
the  Griffin  entered  into  Lake  Huron,  the  Franciscans 
chanting  the  Te  Deum  for  the  third  time,  and  the 
entire  crew  joining  in  offering  up  thanks  to  the  Al- 
mighty for  the  smiling  fortune  that  had  thus  far 
accompanied  them  on  their  voyage. 

Crossing  Saginaw  Bay  the  Griffin  lay  for  two  days 


Origin  and  Early  History  173 

among  the  Thunder  Bay  islands  and  then  continued 
her  way  into  the  North.  Almost  immediately  after 
this,  La  Salle  and  his  companions  were  caught  in 
a  terrific  storm,  and  in  the  height  of  its  fury,  when 
it  was  thought  that  the  end  had  come  and  that  all 
the  demons  of  this  mysterious  world  were  working 
their  destruction,  La  Salle  made  a  vow  that  if  God 
would  deliver  them  he  would  erect  a  chapel  in  Louis- 
iana to  the  memory  of  St.  Anthony  de  Padua,  the 
tutelary  saint  of  the  sailor.  As  if  in  response  to  this 
vow,  the  wind  subsided  and  the  storm-beaten  Griffin 
found  shelter  in  Michilimackinac  Bay,  where  a  mission 
had  been  built  among  the  Ottawas.  Early  in  Sep- 
tember, the  Griffin  sailed  into  Lake  Michigan  and 
continued  to  Washington  Island,  at  the  entrance 
to  Green  Bay.  Here  a  party  of  missionaries  and 
traders  had  been  established  for  a  year.  They  had 
collected  a  large  quantity  of  furs,  valued  at  about 
twelve  thousand  dollars,  and  La  Salle  changed  his 
original  plans  and  sent  the  Griffin  back  to  Niagara 
with  this  treasure,  with  the  idea  of  continuing  his 
own  exploration  by  canoe. 

On  the  eighteenth  of  September,  1679,  La  Salle 
bade  adieu  to  the  Griffin  and  her  crew,  and  from 
the  point  of  a  headland  watched  her  white  sails  until 
they  dropped  below  the  horizon.  It  was  the  last 
he  ever  heard  or  saw  of  the  ship.  No  sign  of  her 
was  ever  afterward  found,  no  soul  who  sailed  with 
her  lived  to  tell  the  story  of  her  tragic  end.     In  the 


174  The  Great  Lakes 

years  that  followed,  it  was  rumoured  that  Indians 
boarded  and  destroyed  her,  and  massacred  her  crew. 
Hennepin  was  of  the  opinion  that  she  was  lost  in 
a  storm.  Others  believed  that  some  of  her  crew 
had  mutinied  and  that  after  murdering  their  com- 
panions they  had  joined  the  Ottawas,  where  they 
met  their  own  fate.  From  time  to  time  in  recent 
years,  relics  have  been  found  along  the  Lakes  which 
have  revived  stories  of  the  mysterious  disappearance 
of  the  Griffin,  but  none  of  these  finds  have  yet  thrown 
reasonable  light  upon  the  tragic  end  of  this  first 
vessel  to  navigate  the  Inland  Seas  and  of  the  venture- 
some spirits  who  manned  her.  By  all  but  a  few  the 
Griffin  is  forgotten,  or  has  never  been  known.  Yet 
by  the  millions  who  live  along  the  Great  Lakes  she 
should  be  held  in  much  the  same  reverence  as  are 
the  caravels  of  Columbus  by  the  whole  nation. 


I*^ 


Marquette's  Grave,  vSt.  Ignace,  Michigan. 


II 

The   Lakes   Change   Masters 

FOR  more  than  a  hundred  years  after  the  sailing 
of  the  Griffin  the  Great  Lakes  and  the  country 
about  them  were  destined  to  be  the  scenes 
of  almost  ceaseless  war.  The  fury  of  the  internecine 
strife  of  the  Indians  was  on  the  wane.  Their  con- 
flicts of  extermination  had  worked  their  frightful 
end  and  it  now  came  time  for  them  to  give  up  the 
red  arena  of  the  Inland  Seas  to  other  foes,  among 
whom  the  last  vestiges  of  their  power  were  doomed 
to  melt  away  like  snow  under  the  warmth  of  the 
sun.  For  unnumbered  generations  they  had  fought 
among  themselves.  Nations  of  red  men  had  been 
bom,  and  nations  had  died.  The  Lake  regions  were 
white  with  their  bones  and  red  with  their  blood, 
and  now  those  that  remained  of  them  were  to  be 
used  as  pawns  in  the  games  of  war  between  the  Eng- 
lish and  the  French,  among  whom  they  were  still 
to  play  an  important  though  a  fatal  part. 

The  romantic  voyage  of  the  Griffin  marked  that 
era  when  the  French  were  gaining  possession  of 
the  Lakes.     Eight  years  before  La  Salle's  expedition, 

Simon  Francis  Daumont  had  taken  formal  possession 

.    175 


176  The  Great  Lakes 

of  the  Inland  Seas  in  the  presence  of  seventeen  dif- 
ferent Indian  nations.  In  1761,  a  fort  had  been 
erected  at  Mackinaw,  and  Daniel  Deluth,  after  whom 
the  city  of  Duluth  was  named,  planted  a  colony  of 
French  soldiers  among  the  Sioux  and  Assiniboines 
of  Minnesota.  From  this  time  on,  the  power  of  the 
French  steadily  gained  in  ascendancy  and  the  work 
of  winning  the  allegiance  of  the  Indians  progressed 
for  a  number  of  years  without  interruption.  In 
1686,  Fort  Duluth  was  built  on  the  St.  Clair  River, 
and  fifteen  years  later,  in  1701,  Cadillac  built  a  fort 
on  the  present  site  of  Detroit,  which  was  destined 
to  play  a  picturesque  and  important  part  in  the 
century  of  war  that  was  to  follow.  Other  forts  of 
the  French  were  at  Michilimackinac  (Mackinac),  Chi- 
cago, Green  Bay,  and  on  the  Niagara  River.  Nearly 
all  of  the  Indians  of  the  Lake  regions  had  become 
their  allies,  with  the  exception  of  the  Iroquois.  The 
forests  and  streams  were  the  haunts  of  French  traders. 
The  Church  was  establishing  itself  more  and  more 
firmly  among  the  tribes.  The  adventurous  trappers 
of  the  fur  companies  were  even  living  among  the 
savages,  and  there  was  fast  developing  between  the 
red  men  and  the  French  that  bond  of  friendship 
which  was  to  remain  almost  unbroken  through  all 
of  the  troublous  times  that  were  to  follow.  The 
power  of  France,  at  this  time,  seemed  bound  to  rule 
the  destinies  of  the  Inland  Seas. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Iroquois  were  the  implacable 


The  Lakes  Change  Masters  177 

enemies  of  the  French  and  their  alHes,  and  the  friends 
of  the  EngHsh.  They  were  distributed  over  a  ter- 
ritory which  embraced  the  Lake  Ontario  regions 
and  which  extended  to  the  EngUsh  settlements  of 
the  East,  thus  offering  a  free  and  safe  road  of  travel 
to  English  traders  into  the  domains  of  the  French. 
Reduced  to  less  than  a  quarter  of  the  fighting  strength 
that  they  had  possessed  before  the  wars  of  exter- 
mination, they  were  still  the  terror  of  all  other  Lake 
tribes,  and  the  English  were  not  slow  to  take  advantage 
of  the  opportunities  which  their  friendship  offered  them. 
At  every  possible  point  the  Five  Nations  checked  the 
movements  of  the  French,  and  at  the  same  time 
assisted  the  English  traders  to  invade  their  territory. 
In  1684,  De  la  Barre,  then  Governor  of  Canada,  de- 
termined to  destroy  this  last  menace  to  French  do- 
minion, and  sent  word  throughout  the  Lake  regions 
calling  upon  his  warrior  allies  to  assemble  at  Niagara 
for  a  great  war  of  extermination  upon  the  Iroquois. 
De  la  Barre  himself  proceeded  to  Lake  Ontario  with 
a  powerful  force  of  nearly  two  thousand  men,  but 
an  epidemic  of  sickness  attacked  his  army  and  the 
only  result  of  the  "campaign  of  extermination"  was 
a  peaceful  conference  with  the  Oneidas,  Onondagas, 
and  Cayugas. 

The  failure  of  De  la  Barre's  plans  was  the  first 
great  blow  to  French  dominion.  The  English  traders 
became  more  daring  and  parties  penetrated  even 
as  far  as  Michilimackinac,  one  of  the  French  strong- 


178  The  Great  Lakes 

holds.  These  traders  were  regarded  as  fair  game 
by  the  French  wherever  found,  but  though  several 
parties  were  captured  the  invasion  from  the  East 
did  not  cease.  Alarmed  at  the  growing  danger,  the 
French  determined  to  make  another  campaign  against 
the  Iroquois.  To  the  existence  of  the  Five  Nations 
they  ascribed  their  peril.  With  these  fierce  warriors 
out  of  the  way  they  could  easily  hold  the  English 
back. 

In  1687,  the  Marquis  Denonville,  who  had  suc- 
ceeded De  la  Barre,  gathered  two  thousand  troops 
and  six  hundred  Indian  warriors  at  Montreal,  and 
with  the  advice  that  a  thousand  Indian  allies  would 
meet  him  at  Niagara  set  out  for  the  land  of  the  Iro- 
quois. On  June  23d,  the  forces  met  at  Fort  Fron- 
tenac  and  from  there  proceeded  to  Irondequoit,  in 
the  enemy's  country.  Only  the  Senecas,  one  branch 
of  the  Five  Nations,  had  gathered  to  meet  the  in- 
vaders, and  in  the  fierce  battle  that  followed,  the 
French  and  their  allies  were  defeated  and  driven 
to  the  shores  of  the  lake.  Satisfied  with  their  victory, 
the  Senecas  did  not  press  the  invaders,  and  Denon- 
ville took  advantage  of  his  opportunity  to  build 
Fort  Niagara,  after  which  he  led  the  remnant  of  his 
defeated  army  back  to  Montreal,  leaving  a  garrison 
of  one  hundred  men  in  the  new  stronghold.  During 
the  winter  that  followed,  the  Senecas  besieged  the 
fort  with  such  success  that  less  than  a  dozen  of  its 
defenders  escaped  with  their  lives. 


The  Lakes  Change  Masters  179 

News  of  the  defeat  of  the  French  spread  like  wild- 
fire. It  penetrated  to  the  farthest  fastnesses  of  the 
known  wildernesses.  English  traders  began  to  swarm 
into  the  Lower  Lake  regions.  The  Indian  nations 
allied  to  the  French  were  thrown  into  a  panic.  The 
war  spirit  of  the  Iroquois  was  aroused  to  a  feverish 
height  by  their  victory,  and  they  swarmed  to  the 
invasion  of  the  French  dominions.  Fort  Frontenac 
was  captured  and  burned.  Both  the  allies  and  the 
French  were  swept  back  with  tremendous  slaughter, 
and  their  power  upon  the  Lower  Lakes  was  broken. 
"It  seemed,"  said  an  early  writer,  "as  if  the  Five 
Nations  would  sweep  over  the  entire  Lake  country, 
driving  all  enemies  from  their  shores,  and  thus  de- 
livering into  the  hands  of  the  English  all  that  the 
French  had  gained." 

But,  in  this  hour  of  victory,  the  shadow  of  doom 
was  hovering  over  the  martial  people  of  the  Five 
Nations.  For  unnumbered  years  the  conquerors  of 
the  New  World,  the  time  had  at  last  come  for  their 
fall.  The  War  of  the  Palatinate  was  at  hand,  and 
the  hostilities  of  the  French  and  the  English  spread 
to  land  and  sea.  Rumours  came  that  Frontenac  was 
about  to  sweep  down  upon  New  York,  and  the  faithful 
Iroquois  turned  back  to  defend  the  city  of  their  White 
Father.  They  threw  themselves  between  the  invaders 
and  their  friends,  an  unconquerable  barrier.  New 
York  was  saved,  but  in  the  struggle  the  power  of 
the  Five  Nations  was  broken.    For  many  years  they 


i8o  The  Great  Lakes 

still  remained  a  force  to  be  reckoned  with,  but  as  the 
conquering  Romans  of  the  Wilderness  and  the  terror 
of  a  score  of  nations,  extending  even  to  the  Missis- 
sippi, their  history  was  at  an  end.  In  their  passing 
it  must  be  said  that  a  braver  man,  a  truer  friend, 
or  a  more  relentless  foe  never  existed  on  the  American 
continent  than  the  Iroquois  warrior. 

There  now  came  a  brief  lull  in  the  warfare  of  the 
Lakes.  The  end  of  the  War  of  the  Palatinate  was 
closely  followed  by  Queen  Anne's  War,  but  hostilities 
did  not  openly  break  out  along  the  Inland  Seas.  The 
Treaty  of  Utrecht  in  1713  left  France  technically 
in  possession  of  the  Lakes,  but,  even  after  this  treaty, 
the  English  claimed  as  a  sort  of  inheritance  from 
the  Iroquois  the  regions  of  Lake  Ontario  and  Lake 
Erie.  This  fact  again  gave  opportunity  for  plenty 
of  excitement  and  trouble.  The  French  had  rebuilt 
Fort  Frontenac  and  were  establishing  other  strong- 
holds, their  object  being  to  hem  the  English  along 
their  seacoast  possessions  by  means  of  a  string  of 
forts  extending  from  Canada  southward.  To  frustrate 
these  designs  Governor  Burnett,  of  New  York,  began 
the  erection  of  a  trading-post  at  Oswego  in  1720. 
The  French  at  once  reciprocated  by  rebuilding  Fort 
Niagara  of  stone,  whereupon,  in  1727,  the  English 
added  a  strong  fort  to  their  holdings  in  Oswego. 
This  all  but  started  active  hostilities  again.  Beau- 
hamois,  the  Governor  of  Canada,  flew  into  a  high 
dudgeon,  sent  a  written  demand  for  the  English  to 


The  Lakes  Change  Masters  i8i 

abandon  the  fort,  and  threatened  to  demoUsh  it 
unless  this  was  done.  The  response  of  the  English 
was  to  strengthen  their  garrison.  Instead  of  carrying 
out  his  threat  of  war,  Beauhamois  began  the  strength- 
ening of  all  the  French  forts,  a  work  which  continued 
for  several  years.  Meanwhile  the  French  trappers, 
traders,  and  priests  of  the  Upper  Lakes  had  been 
stirring  the  passions  of  the  Indians  against  the  en- 
croaching English.  The  latter,  in  1755,  built  two 
warships  on  Lake  Ontario,  and  it  was  pointed  out 
to  the  Western  tribes  that  these  were  two  of  the 
terrible  engines  that  were  intended  to  work  their 
destruction.  By  the  time  of  the  breaking  out  of 
the  Seven  Years'  War,  the  French,  though  their 
population  was  less  than  a  tenth  of  that  of  their 
enemies,  were  splendidly  prepared  for  war. 

Actual  operations  in  this  last  struggle  between 
the  French  and  the  English  for  the  possession  of 
the  Lakes  began  in  1756,  when  De  Lery  and  De  Villier 
set  out  with  some  six  hundred  men  to  capture  Oswego 
and  other  forts.  On  the  Onondaga  River,  De  Villier 
encountered  Bradstreet  and  his  English  and  was 
completely  defeated,  more  than  a  hundred  of  his  men 
being  killed.  Meanwhile,  from  Fort  Frontenac,  Gen- 
eral Montcalm  was  preparing  to  descend  upon  Oswego, 
and  on  the  ninth  of  August,  1756,  he  arrived  in  sight 
of  the  English  stronghold  with  three  thousand  men 
under  his  command.  On  the  twelfth  the  battle  began. 
From  the  beginning  it  was  a  surprise  to  both  com- 


1 82  The  Great  Lakes 

batants.  The  victory  of  the  French  was  comparatively 
easy  and  complete.  The  English  loss  was  one  hundred 
and  fifty  killed  and  wounded.  Nearly  two  thousand 
prisoners  were  taken,  one  hundred  and  twenty  cannon 
and  mortars,  six  war  vessels,  and  an  immense  amount 
of  stores  and  ammunition.  The  blow  was  a  terrific 
one  for  the  English.  Oswego  had  been  their  Gib- 
raltar. In  it  were  their  shipbuilding  yard,  nearly 
all  of  their  heavy  ordnance,  and  a  large  part  of  the 
stores  that  were  to  supply  them  during  the  war. 
For  the  first  time,  the  English  realised  what  a  terrible 
loss  they  had  sustained  in  the  breaking  of  the  power 
of  the  Five  Nations. 

It  was  not  until  1758  that  the  English  regained 
a  little  of  their  lost  prestige.  Everywhere  the  French 
had  been  victorious.  But,  in  the  summer  of  this 
year,  Colonel  Bradstreet  attacked  Fort  Frontenac 
with  thirty-five  hundred  men,  and  after  two  days 
of  battle  the  garrison  surrendered.  This  was  as  de- 
cisive a  blow  to  the  French  as  was  the  loss  of  Oswego 
to  the  English.  Ten  thousand  barrels  of  supplies, 
nearly  a  hundred  cannon,  and  five  vessels  were  de- 
stroyed. The  French  now  saw  that  the  beginning 
of  the  end  was  at  hand.  Little  Fort  Niagara  was 
burned  the  following  year  to  keep  it  from  falling 
into  the  hands  of  their  enemies,  and  a  little  later 
Fort  Niagara  surrendered.  At  this  time  French 
reinforcements  were  on  their  way  to  Niagara,  but 
hearing  of  the  fall  of  this  last  stronghold  the  ships 


Q 
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a 


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o 

a 


;3 


©F  THE 

t  university; 

OF 


The  Lakes  Change  Masters  183 

which  bore  them  were  destroyed  at  the  northern 
end  of  Grand  Island,  in  a  bay  which  from  that  time 
has  been  known  as  Burnt  Ship  Bay,  and  at  the  bottom 
of  which,  until  a  comparatively  short  time  ago,  the 
remains  of  the  old  vessels  were  plainly  to  be  seen. 
With  the  fall  of  Montreal  in  1760,  the  last  flag  of 
the  French  passed  from  the  Great  Lakes.  Their 
warships  were  scuttled,  their  forts  in  the  North  sur- 
rendered, and  within  a  few  months  England  was 
everywhere  supreme  along  the  Inland  Seas. 

There  now  followed  a  curious  and  absorbingly 
interesting  phase  of  Lake  history.  The  English  had 
conquered  the  French — ^but  they  had  not  conquered 
the  red  allies.  The  warriors  of  the  Upper  Lakes 
could  not  be  made  to  understand  the  situation.  "We 
fight  until  there  are  none  of  us  left  to  fight,"  they 
said.  "Why  is  it  that  our  French  brothers  have 
run?  Shall  we  run  because  they  have  run?  We 
were  their  friends  and  brothers.  We  are  their  friends 
now,  and  though  you  have  conquered  them  we  will 
still  fight  for  them,  so  long  as  there  are  among  us 
men  who  can  fight."  A  more  beautiful  illustration 
of  the  friendship  and  loyalty  of  the  Indian  warrior 
could  hardly  be  conceived  than  this. 

And  it  was  largely  this  loyalty,  this  loyalty  to  a 
race  that  had  been  destroyed  in  their  regions,  that 
was  to  result  in  those  terrible  wars  and  massacres 
which  marked  the  course  of  English  rule  along  the 
Lakes,   almost   as   regularly   as  mile-posts  mark  the 


i84  The  Great  Lakes 

course  of  a  road.  In  the  hearts  of  the  savages  there 
was  an  intense,  ineradicable  hatred  of  the  Enghsh. 
They,  and  not  the  French,  were  regarded  as  the 
usurpers  and  despoilers  of  the  country.  This  hatred 
was  even  greater  than  that  of  the  Five  Nations  to- 
ward the  French.  It  was  something,  as  one  old  writer 
says,  "beyond  description,  beyond  the  power  to 
raeasure." 

In  these  days,  a  fearful  fate  was  rolling  up  slowly 
for  the  string  of  forts  along  the  Inland  Seas,  a  doom 
that  came  without  warning  and  with  terrible  com- 
pleteness. At  the  head  of  the  great  conspiracy  which 
was  to  result  in  the  destruction  of  all  the  forts  held 
by  the  English,  with  the  exception  of  that  at  Detroit, 
was  Chief  Pontiac.  On  May  i6,  1763,  the  first  blow 
fell.  By  what  was  called  treachery  on  the  part  of 
the  Indians,  but  what  would  be  termed  stratagem 
in  a  white  man's  war.  Fort  Sandusky  was  captured 
and  its  entire  garrison,  with  the  exception  of  one 
man,  was  massacred.  Meanwhile  a  band  of  Pot- 
tawatomies  from  Detroit  had  hurried  to  the  fort 
at  the  mouth  of  St.  Joseph's  River,  at  the  head  of 
Lake  Michigan,  and,  on  the  morning  of  the  twenty- 
fifth,  killed  the  whole  of  its  garrison  with  the  ex- 
ception of  three.  Eight  days  later  Michilimackinac 
(Mackinac)  feU.  On  the  morning  of  this  fatal  day, 
a  large  party  of  Ojibwas  were  to  play  a  game  of 
ball  with  the  Sacs,  and  not  a  breath  of  suspicion 
filled  the  breasts  of  the   doomed   officers   and   men. 


The  Lakes  Change  Masters  185 

Discipline  was  relaxed  on  account  of  the  game.  Ex- 
citement ran  high.  The  Indians  were  in  the  best 
of  spirits,  and  had  never  seemed  more  friendly.  Their 
sole  thought  seemed  to  be  of  the  great  game.  Scores 
of  blanketed  squaws  and  old  men  had  assembled, 
and  these,  without  creating  suspicion,  had  gathered 
close  to  the  open  gates.  The  game  began,  and  the 
shouting,  struggling  savages  rushed  this  way  and 
that  in  pursuit  of  the  ball.  Now  they  would  surge 
far  from  the  stockade,  now  so  close  that  they  would 
crush  against  its  pickets.  Suddenly  the  ball  shot 
high  into  the  air  and  fell  inside  the  fort,  and 
a  hundred  yelling  savages  rushed  to  the  gates. 
Instantly  the  scene  was  changed.  The  squaws  and 
the  old  men  threw  back  their  blankets  and  gave 
hatchets  and  guns  to  the  warriors  as  they  rushed 
past  them.  Within  a  few  minutes,  seventeen  men 
were  killed  and  the  rest  of  the  garrison  were  prisoners. 
Five  of  these  prisoners  were  afterward  killed  by 
their  captors.  The  fate  of  the  garrison  at  Presque 
Isle  was  less  terrible.  For  two  days,  the  defenders 
of  the  fort  held  off  the  savages  and  then  surrendered 
upon  the  promise  that  their  lives  would  be  spared. 
The  prisoners  were  carried  to  Detroit. 

During  this  time,  while  the  conspiracy  was  working 
with  such  terrible  success  at  nearly  every  point,  the 
great  Pontiac  himself  had  failed  in  his  designs  upon 
Detroit.  The  garrison  at  this  point  was  the  strongest 
on  the  Lakes,  being  composed  of  one  hundred  and 


1 86  The  Great  Lakes 

twenty  men  under  the  command  of  Major  Gladwin 
and  some  forty  or  fifty  traders  and  trappers.  They 
were  strongly  entrenched  behind  palisades  twenty- 
five  feet  high,  were  well  supplied  with  the  necessities 
of  war,  and  Pontiac  regarded  them  as  invincible 
unless  he  could  overcome  them  by  stratagem.  By 
the  merest  chance  a  fearful  massacre  was  averted. 
Early  in  May  Major  Gladwin  received  warning  of 
Pontiac's  plotting,  but  paid  comparatively  little  at- 
tention to  it  until,  under  a  clever  pretext,  the  Indian 
chieftain  asked  that  he  and  a  number  of  his  warriors 
be  allowed  to  enter  the  fort.  Under  their  blankets 
Pontiac  and  his  braves  carried  hatchets  and  short - 
barrelled  rifles,  their  intention  being  to  take  the  un- 
prepared garrison  by  surprise  and  during  the  first 
excitement  of  the  fray  to  throw  open  the  gates  for 
the  hundreds  of  armed  savages  waiting  near.  But 
when  the  Indians  came  within  the  palisades  they 
found  the  garrison  under  arms  and  awaiting  them. 

This  frustrated  all  of  the  great  chief's  carefully 
laid  plans,  and  the  attack  was  postponed.  Three 
days  later  Pontiac  again  asked  admittance  to  the 
fort,  but  was  refused.  Knowing  that  in  some  way 
his  plot  had  been  revealed  to  the  English,  Pontiac 
at  once  began  his  attack  and  for  several  hours 
fought  desperately  to  take  the  stronghold,  but  was 
repulsed  again  and  again  with  great  loss.  Desultor}' 
fighting,  attacks  and  counter-attacks,  were  frequent 
features  of  the  siege  that  followed.    Meanwhile  twenty 


a 

d 


o 


;3 

o 


o 


UNIVERSITY 

OF 


The  Lakes  Change  Masters  187 

boats  and  a  hundred  men,  together  with  a  large  quan- 
tity of  suppHes,  had  left  Fort  Niagara  for  Detroit 
under  the  command  of  Lieutenant  Cuyler,  and  these 
reinforcements  were  anxiously  awaited  by  the  be- 
sieged. They  were  destined  never  to  reach  Detroit. 
On  June  28th,  Lieutenant  Cuyler  and  his  command 
landed  on  Point  Pelee  with  the  intention  of  camping 
there  for  the  night.  Hardly  had  they  drawn  their 
boats  upon  the  beach  when  they  were  greeted  by 
a  tremendous  volley  of  musketry,  and  with  frightful 
yells  a  horde  of  savages  rushed  down  upon  them 
from  their  ambush.  Taken  completely  by  surprise 
the  English  made  no  resistance  but  fled  precipitately 
for  their  boats.  Less  than  forty  men,  many  of  them 
wounded,  escaped  in  three  boats  and  made  for  Fort 
Sandusky,  which  they  found  had  been  destroyed. 
All  hope  of  reaching  Detroit  was  now  abandoned 
and  the  worn  and  wounded  remnants  of  the  rein- 
forcing party  rowed  back  to  Niagara. 

Meanwhile  the  condition  of  the  garrison  at  Detroit 
was  becoming  desperate.  Both  ammunition  and 
food  were  becoming  exhausted,  many  of  the  defenders 
were  wounded  or  sick,  and  each  day  seemed  to  add 
to  the  strength  of  the  savage  besiegers.  On  the  morn- 
ing of  June  30th,  seven  weeks  after  the  beginning 
of  the  siege,  a  large  number  of  boats  flying  the  English 
flag  were  seen  coming  up  the  river,  Joy  gave  place 
to  horror  when  it  was  seen  that  these  boats  were 
filled    with    Indians    and    with   white   prisoners,  the 


1 88  The  Great  Lakes 

latter  being  those  who  were  captured  at  Point  Pelee. 
While  these  savage  victors  had  been  making  their 
way  westward,  Lieutenant  Cuyler  and  his  handful 
of  fugitives  were  on  their  way  to  Niagara,  where 
they  brought  news  of  the  destruction  of  Fort  San- 
dusky and  of  the  possible  fate  of  Detroit.  At  Fort 
Niagara  was  the  armed  schooner  Gladwin,  named 
after  the  defender  of  Detroit,  and  on  July  21st,  she 
sailed  for  the  besieged  fort  carrying  with  her  supplies 
and  a  reinforcement  of  sixty  men.  On  the  night 
of  the  23d,  while  the  schooner  was  lying  becalmed 
between  Fighting  Island  and  the  mainland  in  the 
Detroit  River,  she  was  attacked  by  the  Indians,  who 
were  completely  repulsed.  For  several  days,  while 
slowly  making  her  way  up  the  river  against  head- 
winds and  current,  the  cannon  of  the  Gladwin  spread 
consternation  and  havoc  among  the  savages  along 
the  shores.  Late  in  July,  Captain  Dalzell  arrived 
with  a  score  of  barges,  bringing  cannon,  ammunition, 
supplies,  and  an  additional  force  of  three  hundred 
men.  Pontiac,  however,  was  stiU  hopeful  of  success. 
His  force  had  been  increased  by  more  than  a  thou- 
sand warriors,  and  this  fact  led  to  the  sending  of 
another  reinforcement  from  Fort  Niagara.  Six  hun- 
dred regulars  under  the  command  of  Major  Wilkins 
left  late  in  September.  Near  Pointe-aux-Pins  they  en- 
countered a  terrific  gale  on  Lake  Erie  in  which  seventy 
men  and  three  officers  besides  an  immense  amount 
of  stores  and  ammunition  were  lost,  a  calamity  which 


The  Lakes  Change  Masters  189 

compelled  the  survivors  to  return  to  Niagara.  Winter 
brought  partial  relief  to  Detroit.  The  great  number 
of  Pontiac's  warriors  made  the  struggle  for  subsist- 
ence a  hard  one  and  with  the  coming  of  the  cold 
months  the  tribes  separated  to  keep  from  starvation, 
leaving  only  a  part  of  their  fighting  men  to  maintain 
the  siege,  thus  removing  for  the  time  being  the  im- 
mediate danger  of  the  capture  and  massacre  of  the 
garrison. 

During  the  winter  that  followed,  the  English  pre- 
pared to  begin  a  campaign  in  the  spring  of  a  mag- 
nitude heretofore  unknown  among  the  wilderness 
tribes.  The  daring  and  confidence  of  the  Indians 
were  becoming  more  and  more  menacing.  On  Sep- 
tember 14th,  one  of  the  most  terrible  massacres  of 
the  Lake  country  occurred  at  Devil's  Hole,  three 
miles  below  Niagara  Falls.  The  Devil's  Hole  is  now 
visited  by  thousands  of  tourists  each  year,  but  prob- 
ably not  one  in  a  hundred  knows  of  the  bloody  con- 
flict that  gave  it  its  name.  On  that  day,  a  convoy 
of  soldiers  were  returning  to  Fort  Niagara  from  Fort 
Schlosser,  and  in  the  gloomy  chasm  of  the  "Hole," 
which  leads  from  the  bluffs  above  down  to  the  river, 
a  party  of  ambushed  Senecas  were  awaiting  them. 
Unaware  of  their  danger,  the  soldiers  came  within 
a  few  rods  of  the  ambush,  and  in  the  massacre  that 
followed  all  but  three  of  the  total  number  of 
twenty-four  were  killed.  A  strong  force  from  Ni- 
agara  came  to    give    the    Indians    battle    and    was 


i9o  The  Great  Lakes 

completely  defeated,  losing  about  twoscore  of  its 
men. 

The  English  were  now  practically  wiped  out  of 
the  Lake  country,  with  the  exception  of  along  the 
Niagara  and  at  Detroit,  and  the  investment  at  the 
latter  place  threatened  to  be  successful  unless  prompt 
steps  were  taken  for  the  relief  of  the  fort  with  an 
overwhelming  force.  It  was  not  until  August  of  the 
following  year  that  a  force  sufficiently  powerful  for 
the  campaign  was  gathered  at  Fort  Schlosser.  With 
three  thousand  men.  General  Bradstreet  set  out  in 
bateaux  to  first  strike  a  blow  at  the  Indians  along 
Lake  Erie.  Instead  of  fighting,  however,  the  Ohio 
tribes  were  anxious  to  make  peace  with  the  invaders, 
and  after  a  few  skirmishes  and  many  promises  on 
the  part  of  the  Indians,  Bradstreet  reached  Detroit. 
The  long  siege,  which  had  existed  for  more  than  a 
year,  was  broken,  treaties  of  peace  were  signed  with 
many  Indian  tribes,  and  the  English  again  secured 
possession  at  Michilimackinac,  Green  Bay,  and  Sault 
Ste.  Marie.  But  Pontiac  was  irreconciliable  and,  like 
Robert  Bruce  of  old,  fled  into  the  West  with  a  few 
of  his  followers  to  await  another  opportunity  to 
swoop  down  upon  his  enemies. 

But  the  balance  of  fate  still  seemed  to  be  with  the 
untamed  children  of  the  wilderness,  for  Bradstreet 's 
return  to  Fort  Niagara  was  marked  by  disasters  suf- 
ficient to  offset  much  that  he  had  achieved.  At 
Rocky  River,  near   Cleveland,  he   was   caught    in   a 


as 

o 

03 


Q 


o 

o 


o 


3 
5 

o 


The  Lakes  Change  Masters  191 

terrific  gale  and  met  a  fate  similar  to  that  which 
had  overtaken  Major  Wilkins  in  the  preceding  Sep- 
tember. In  the  rush  for  shore,  twenty-five  of  his 
bateaux,  six  cannon,  and  a  great  quantity  of  his 
baggage  and  ammunition  were  lost,  together  with 
scores  of  his  men.  The  force  was  now  divided,  a 
part  of  it  to  make  its  way  through  the  wilderness, 
and  the  remainder  to  travel  in  the  uninjured  bateaux. 
Bradstreet  reached  Niagara  on  November  4th,  but 
for  twelve  weeks  the  land  force  fought  its  way  through 
tangles  of  forest  and  swamp,  fighting,  starving,  and 
dying  of  disease  and  exposure.  The  number  of  those 
who  were  lost  in  the  storm  and  in  this  overland  march 
has  never  been  recorded,  but  it  was  so  large  as  to 
occasion  petitions  to  the  government,  which  was 
an  unusual  thing  in  those  days  of  war  and  carnage. 
From  that  day  to  this,  at  various  times.  Lake  Erie 
has  given  up  relics  of  the  lost  fleets  of  Major  Wilkins 
and  General  Bradstreet  in  portions  of  old  bateaux, 
gun-flints,  musket-barrels,  bayonets,  cannon  balls, 
and  other  objects.  At  one  time,  when  a  sandbar 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Rocky  River  changed  its  position, 
a  vast  quantity  of  these  relics  were  revealed,  showing 
that  one  of  the  lost  bateaux  had  sunk  there  and  had 
been  uncovered  after  a  lapse  of  many  generations. 
For  a  ntimber  of  years  after  the  subjugation  of 
the  Indian  tribes,  the  peace  of  the  Lakes  was  dis- 
turbed only  by  the  rivalries  of  the  fur-traders  and 
unimportant  skirmishes  with  the  savages.     The  era 


192  The  Great  Lakes 

of  warships  on  the  Inland  Seas  had  now  begun,  and 
by  the  time  the  Revolutionary  War  broke  out,  they 
were  patrolled  by  quite  a  number  of  armed  vessels 
bearing  the  flag  of  England.  The  Lakes  were  destined 
to  play  but  a  small  part  in  the  struggle  for  independ- 
ence, however,  and  the  most  tragic  event  of  these 
years  upon  them  was  the  loss  in  a  storm  of  the  British 
ship  Ontario,  of  twenty-two  guns,  which  went  down 
between  Niagara  and  Oswego  with  her  entire  crew 
and  more  than  a  hundred  of  the  8th  King's  Own 
Regiment.  At  this  time,  Spain  was  scheming  to 
gain  a  foothold  in  the  Lake  regions,  and,  in  1781, 
a  force  under  Don  Eugenio  Purre  left  St.  Louis  in 
the  depth  of  winter  and  captured  the  English  fort 
at  St.  Joseph.  For  only  a  few  hours  the  flag  of  Spain 
floated  over  the  Lake  country,  Don  Eugenio 's  scheme 
being  merely  to  secure  a  "claim"  to  the  regions, 
and  once  his  banner  had  risen  triumphantly  above 
the  captured  fort  he  abandoned  his  position  and 
retreated  to  St.  Louis. 

Several  times  during  the  Revolutionary  War  it 
was  proposed  that  an  attempt  be  made  to  capture 
Detroit,  but  no  efforts  were  made  in  this  direction, 
so  that  when  peace  was  declared  and  the  colonies 
were  granted  their  independence,  England  still  re- 
mained in  possession  of  the  Great  Lakes.  It  was 
not  until  1796  that  the  line  of  forts  along  their  shores 
were  surrendered  into  the  hands  of  the  Americans. 
On  July  4th  of  that  year.  Forts  Niagara,  Lewiston, 


The  Lakes  Change  Masters  193 

and  Schlosser  floated  for  the  first  time  in  history 
the  banner  of  the  new  nation,  and  a  week  later,  Cap- 
tain Moses  Porter  raised  the  same  emblem  above 
Detroit.  Thus  after  having  been  the  stage  of  almost 
ceaseless  war  for  more  than  a  century  and  a  half 
did  it  seem  that  peace  had  at  last  come  to  the  Great 
Lakes  regions.  Yet  were  the  clouds  already  gathering 
which  a  few  years  later  were  to  burst  forth  in  another 
storm  of  blood  along  the  shores  and  upon  the  waters 

of  the  Inland  Seas. 
13 


Ill 

The   War   of   1812   and   After 

THE  years  of  peace  which  followed  the  surrender 
of  the  English  along  the  Lakes  were  not  ones 
of  rapid  development.  It  was  as  if  this  vast 
country,  bathed  in  blood  for  more  than  a  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years,  had  fallen  into  a  restful 
sleep.  Until  1800  there  was  almost  no  emigration 
west.  By  the  new  nation,  the  shores  of  Lake  Erie 
were  still  regarded  as  in  the  far  wilderness.  The 
fur-trade,  it  is  true,  increased  in  volume,  but  not 
until  after  1805  did  the  traffic  of  the  Lakes  begin 
to  show  any  decided  growth.  From  then  on  con- 
ditions brightened.  Settlers  began  going  into  Ohio. 
Lake  Ontario  developed  a  considerable  shipping- 
trade,  and  both  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain 
began  to  strengthen  their  naval  forces,  the  American 
ships  being  almost  entirely  on  Lake  Ontario.  At 
the  time  of  the  breaking  out  of  the  War  of  181 2, 
American  interests  on  Lake  Erie  were  almost  en- 
tirely unguarded,  the  only  vessel  patrolling  it  bemg 
a  small  brig   armed  with  six-pounders  which,   after 

its  capture  by  the  British,  was  named  the  Detroit.    To 

194 


o 

•  1-1 

o 

03 


O 

O 

.S 
'^ 

o 


The  War  of  1812  and  After  195 

make  the  situation  of  the  Americans  still  worse  a 
curious  change  had  been  working  among  the  Indians 
and  French.  The  bitter  enemies  of  the  English  only 
a  few  years  before,  they  now  became  their  staunchest 
allies,  and  the  first  blow  struck  was  largely  by  the 
Ottawas  and  Chippewas,  who  joined  Captain  Roberts 
at  St.  Joseph  in  an  attack  upon  Mackinac.  Lieu- 
tenant Hanks,  who  was  in  command  of  the  fort, 
had  no  knowledge  of  the  declaration  of  war  and  fell 
an  easy  victim  to  the  strategy  of  Roberts  and  his 
Indians  and  French.  Not  a  gun  was  fired  in  the 
capture  of  this  important  post,  which  gave  to  the 
victors  the  key  to  the  entire  North,  and  at  once  placed 
them  in  a  commanding  position  for  the  approaching 
struggle. 

Events  now  began  to  assume  a  more  warlike  aspect 
along  the  Lakes.  At  Detroit,  the  Americans  had 
been  assembling  in  force,  and  on  July  12,  181 2,  Gen- 
eral Hull  crossed  the  river  into  Canada  at  the  head 
of  twenty-two  hundred  men,  his  object  being  to 
prevent  further  construction  on  British  fortifica- 
tions which  were  in  progress  near  Sandwich.  Seven 
days  later.  Commodore  Earle,  in  command  of  the 
British  naval  forces  on  Lake  Ontario,  made  a  futile 
bombardment  of  Sacketts  Harbour.  Meanwhile  at 
York,  now  Toronto,  Major-General  Brock  was  as- 
sembling his  forces,  and  before  Hull  crossed  the 
river,  he  had  established  himself  at  Fort  Niagara 
and  had  sent   reinforcements  under  Colonel  Proctor 


196  The  Great  Lakes 

to  Amherstburg,  a  few  miles  down  the  river  from 
Detroit,  where  the  British  were  to  act  as  a  check 
to  Hull.  The  latter  had  prepared  to  march  upon 
Maiden  when  General  Brock's  appearance  at  the 
head  of  a  large  body  of  British  and  Indian  troops 
sent  him  in  precipitate  retreat  to  Detroit. 

Before  his  attack  upon  the  Americans,  Brock 
sought  an  interview  with  the  Indian  chief  Tecumseh 
and  succeeded  in  winning  his  friendship  to  the  British 
cause.  On  August  15th,  the  attack  upon  Detroit 
was  made,  beginning  with  a  bombardment  from 
guns  situated  across  the  river.  The  Americans  in 
their  trenches  were  eager  for  battle.  Never  had  a 
garrison  been  more  confident  of  repulsing  an  enemy. 
As  the  British  and  Indians  swept  up  to  the  attack, 
the  men  stood  behind  their  shotted  guns  with  lighted 
matches  in  their  hands.  When  the  enemy  was  less 
than  five  hundred  yards  away,  and  as  his  men, 
anxiously  awaiting  the  order  to  fire,  were  sighting 
along  their  guns.  General  Hull  suddenly  commanded 
the  white  flag  to  be  hoisted  above  the  fort.  Never 
were  two  combatants  more  thoroughly  astounded. 
With  a  powerful  force,  strongly  entrenched,  Hull 
had  surrendered  without  firing  a  shot.  Two  thousand 
men  longing  for  battle  and  with  the  odds  all  in  their 
favour  became  the  prisoners  of  less  than  eight  hundred 
British  and  six  hundred  Indians.  It  was  a  humil- 
iating defeat.  In  an  hour  the  prowess  of  the  Americans 
had   dropped   to   the   lowest   ebb.     Hull's  cowardice 


The  War  of  1812  and  After  197 

not  only  placed  the  British  in  supreme  control  of 
the  Upper  Lake  region  but  added  greatly  to  the  foes 
of  the  Americans.  Those  Indian  tribes  that  had 
remained  neutral  at  once  turned  to  the  British,  and 
the  disaffected  militia  of  Canada  were  moved  into 
enthusiastic  support  of  Brock.  On  this  same  day 
Hull  was  directly  responsible  for  one  of  the  most 
horrible  massacres  of  the  Lake  country.  The  com- 
mander at  Fort  Dearborn,  which  stood  on  the  present 
site  of  Chicago,  had  received  orders  from  Hull  to 
evacuate  his  position,  and,  on  the  morning  of  Brock's 
bombardment  of  Detroit,  the  fort's  entire  garrison 
of  seventy  soldiers,  together  with  many  women  and 
children,  set  out  from  its  protection.  They  had 
gone  as  far  as  what  is  now  Eighteenth  Street  when 
they  were  attacked  from  the  rear  by  Miami  Indians 
and  a  merciless  slaughter  followed.  When  only 
twenty  men  remained,  the  little  force  surrendered, 
and  the  captives  were  distributed  among  the  savages. 
At  about  this  time  there  occurred  an  event  on 
Lake  Erie  which  somewhat  lightened  the  gloom 
occasioned  by  the  American  reverses.  Commodore 
Chauncey,  in  command  of  the  American  naval  forces 
on  Ontario,  had  sent  Commander  Jesse  D.  Elliott 
up  to  Erie  to  begin  the  construction  of  a  navy.  Elliott 
was  a  bom  fighter  and  not  slow  to  grasp  opportunities 
that  came  his  way,  and  when  he  learned  that  the 
British  ships  Detroit  and  Caledonia  were  anchored 
under  Fort  Erie,  he  set  out  from  Black  Rock  with 


198  The  Great  Lakes 

one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  men,  ran  his  boats 
alongside  the  two  ships,  and  captured  them  in  a 
fierce  hand-to-hand  conflict  which  began  at  three 
o'clock  in  the  morning.  The  two  vessels  were  at 
once  got  under  way  and  the  Caledonia  was  brought 
within  the  protection  of  an  American  battery  near 
Black  Rock.  The  Detroit  was  less  fortunate  and 
was  compelled  to  haul  to  within  a  few  hundred  yards 
of  a  British  battery.  Elliott  refused  to  abandon 
her  until  his  ammunition  gave  out,  and  even  then 
succeeded  in  bringing  his  prize  to  Squaw  Island, 
where  she  was  within  the  range  of  both  American 
and  British  batteries.  No  sooner  would  one  side 
gain  possession  of  her  than  her  captors  would  be 
driven  off  by  the  guns  of  the  other,  and  in  these  at- 
tacks and  counter-attacks  the  vessel  was  destroyed. 
Elliott,  however,  had  the  nucleus  for  his  new  fleet 
in  the  captured  Caledonia. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war,  it  was  believed  by 
both  British  and  American  officers  that  at  least  one 
of  the  decisive  battles  for  the  mastery  of  the  Lakes 
would  be  fought  somewhere  on  the  Niagara  frontier, 
and  no  sooner  had  Brock  arranged  civil  and  military 
matters  in  the  West  after  the  fall  of  Detroit  than 
he  hastened  back  to  this  scene  of  action.  Mean- 
while the  Americans  had  been  preparing  to  attack 
Queenston,  near  Niagara  Falls,  and  from  that  point 
begin  their  invasion  of  Canada.  The  British  were 
strongly    entrenched    upon    the    Heights    but    their 


The  War  of  1812  and  After  199 

force  was  considerably  inferior  in  number  to  that 
of  Colonel  Van  Rensselaer,  who  was  in  command 
of  the  Americans.  On  the  evening  of  October  12th, 
a  dozen  boats  began  ferrying  the  troops  across  the 
river,  while  at  the  same  time.  Colonel  Chrystie,  with 
three  hundred  men,  and  Colonels  Stranahan,  Mead, 
and  Bloom  were  marching  to  Lewiston.  Early  on 
the  morning  of  the  13th,  the  British  opened  fire, 
in  the  face  of  which  the  Americans  began  scaling 
the  Heights,  driving  the  enemy  back  as  they  ad- 
vanced. At  the  time  of  the  crossing  of  the  Americans, 
Brock  was  at  Fort  George  but  lost  no  time  in  hasten- 
ing to  the  field  of  battle.  In  a  little  marshy  plot 
at  the  foot  of  the  summit  on  which  the  final  struggle 
occurred,  now  marked  by  a  small  stone  monument 
and  overgrown  with  long  grass  and  weeds,  a  bullet 
struck  him  through  the  body  and  he  fell  mortally 
wounded.  This  was  a  terrible  blow  to  the  British, 
but,  in  the  face  of  the  calamity,  they  gallantly  mustered 
their  forces  for  the  recapture  of  the  Heights.  There 
were  still  about  fifteen  hundred  Americans  across 
the  river,  and  if  once  they  were  allowed  to  join  Colonel 
Van  Rensselaer  a  position  would  be  achieved  of  even 
greater  importance  than  that  of  the  British  at  Detroit 
and  Mackinac.  With  one  thousand  men,  the  British 
began  a  furious  attack  of  the  Heights,  which  were 
defended  by  not  more  than  three  hundred  of  the 
Americans  who  had  crossed  the  river.  The  battle 
was  one  of  the  most  desperate  and  at  the  same  time 


200  The  Great  Lakes 

one  of  the  most  picturesque  of  the  war,  parties  of 
the  combatants  being  at  times  on  ground  so  pre- 
cipitous that  it  was  difficult  to  maintain  a  footing. 
The  Americans  were  gradually  beaten  back,  and, 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  a  superior  force  was 
only  a  short  distance  away,  they  were  compelled 
to  surrender,  those  surrendered  including  all  that 
had  crossed  the  river,  the  majority  of  whom  took 
no  part  in  this  last  battle  of  the  Heights.  Ninety 
Americans  were  killed,  about  one  hundred  wounded, 
and  over  eight  hundred  became  prisoners  of  war. 
The  British  lost  less  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  men 
killed  and  wounded. 

Thus  far  almost  unbroken  disaster  had  followed 
the  American  land  forces  in  the  Lake  regions,  much 
of  which  must  be  ascribed  to  the  incompetence  of 
commanding  officers.  Another  fatal  mistake  was 
made  a  few  weeks  after  the  battle  of  Queenston  Heights 
when,  on  November  28th,  another  invasion  of  Canada 
was  attempted.  Three  thousand  men  under  General 
Smyth  were  to  comprise  this  expedition.  At  three 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  twenty-one  boats  left  the 
American  shore  near  Black  Rock,  but  met  with  such 
a  warm  reception  at  the  hands  of  the  British  that 
a  number  of  the  boats  were  compelled  to  fall  back, 
and  in  the  eneral  excitement  only  a  part  of  the 
force  landed.  Captain  King,  in  command  of  one 
division,  captured  two  batteries  after  a  desperate 
struggle,   spiked   the  guns,   and   with  the   assistance 


o 


CO 


o 


o    zi- 


.^ 


Oj  -7^ 


c 


C/D 
o 


O 


The  War  of  1812  and  After  201 

of  Commander  Angus  and  his  men  would  have  won 
a  complete  victory  had  not  the  latter,  for  some  reason 
that  has  never  been  explained,  retreated  in  his  boats. 
As  a  consequence  Captain  King  and  a  number  of 
his  men  were  captured,  and  thus  a  second  attempt 
at  a  Canadian  invasion  fizzled  out  in  complete  dis- 
aster. This  was  practically  the  end  of  the  campaign 
of  the  year  181 2.  There  had  been  several  minor 
naval  events  besides  those  which  I  have  described 
and  a  few  small  operations  on  land,  but  all  of  them 
were  unimportant. 

The  following  year  opened  more  auspiciously  for 
the  Americans,  who  were  the  first  to  begin  active 
hostilities.  On  April  25th,  Commodore  Chauncey  set 
sail  with  a  squadron  of  fourteen  vessels  and  seventeen 
hundred  troops  to  attack  York  (Toronto).  At  this 
time  York  was  poorly  defended  notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  a  24-gun  ship  was  almost  completed 
in  the  harbour  and  an  immense  quantity  of  supplies 
were  stored  there.  The  Americans  began  disem- 
barking early  in  the  morning  of  the  27th,  under  the 
command  of  Brigadier-General  Pike,  while  the  armed 
schooners  beat  up  to  the  fort  and  opened  on  it  with 
their  long  guns.  A  strong  wind  forced  the  small 
boats,  in  which  the  troops  were  being  carried,  so  close 
to  the  works  that  the  landing  instead  of  being  made 
at  a  safe  distance  as  had  been  planned  was  in  the 
face  of  a  galling  fire.  Despite  this,  General  Pike 
assembled  his  men  on  the  beach  and  began  an  im- 


202  The  Great  Lakes 

mediate  assault,  the  Canadians  and  EngHsh  being 
driven  from  their  works  with  heavy  loss.  In  the 
moment  of  defeat,  the  garrison  fired  their  powder 
magazine,  and  in  the  terrific  explosion  that  followed, 
fifty-two  of  the  victors  were  killed  and  one  hundred 
and  eighty  wounded.  Altogether  the  Americans 
lost  seventy  killed  in  both  the  land  and  naval  forces, 
and  the  British  one  hundred  and  eighty  killed  and 
wounded  and  two  hundred  and  ninety  prison- 
ers. The  24-gun  ship  was  burned,  and  another 
vessel,  the  Gloticester,  was  added  to  the  American 
fleet. 

This  victory  was  of  tremendous  importance  to 
the  Americans,  and  it  was  determined  to  at  once 
follow  it  up  by  an  attack  on  Fort  George,  where 
the  British  General  Vincent  was  stationed  with  a 
force  of  over  two  thousand  men,  fifteen  hundred 
of  whom  were  regulars.  On  May  26th,  Commodore 
Chauncey  reconnoitred  the  enemy's  position  and 
afterward  held  their  interest  while  the  Conquest  and 
Tompkins  destroyed  a  battery  some  distance  down 
the  lake.  A  part  of  General  Vincent's  regulars  at- 
tempted to  prevent  a  landing  at  this  point,  but  they 
were  so  terribly  cut  up  by  the  short-range  fire  of 
the  ships  that  they  could  offer  but  little  opposition. 
So  great  was  their  loss  that  the  British  made  little 
further  effort  to  hold  their  position,  blew  up  their 
fort,  and  retreated.  Of  the  Americans,  eighteen 
were  killed   and   forty-seven  wounded.     The  British 


The  War  of  1812  and  After  203 

loss    was    fifty-two    killed,     nearly    three    hundred 
wounded,  and  five  hundred  taken  prisoners. 

This  last  blow  lost  the  Niagara  frontier  to  the 
British.  General  Vincent  at  once  gave  orders  that 
Forts  Chippewa  and  Erie  and  all  public  property 
as  far  down  as  Niagara  Falls  should  be  destroyed. 
The  magazine  at  Fort  Erie  was  fired,  and  a  little  later, 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Preston,  in  command  of  the 
Americans  at  Black  Rock,  took  possession  of  what 
remained  of  the  stronghold,  thus  giving  Perry  an 
opportunity  to  get  out  of  the  Niagara  River  five 
of  the  vessels  which  were  to  play  such  an  important 
part  in  the  naval  history  of  Lake  Erie.  Sacketts 
Harbour  was  now  in  much  the  same  condition  that 
York  (Toronto)  had  been,  and  was  even  more  poorly 
defended.  The  British  planned  to  regain  a  part  of 
their  lost  prestige  by  its  capture,  and  on  May  27th, 
Commodore  Sir  James  Lucas  Yeo  sailed  with  a  large 
fleet  and  a  strong  land  force  under  Sir  George  Pre- 
vost  to  make  the  attack.  On  the  29th,  eight  hundred 
of  the  British  regulars  landed,  but  despite  the  as- 
tonishing inadequacy  of  the  American  garrison  they 
were  beaten  back  with  a  loss  of  fifty-two  killed  and 
two  hundred  and  eleven  wounded,  while  the  Americans 
lost  but  twenty-three  killed  and  one  hundred  and 
fourteen  wounded.  The  British  squadron  returned 
to  Kingston,  and  for  several  weeks  thereafter  co- 
operated with  the  army  forces  and  made  several 
unimportant  naval  captures  while  Chauncey  awaited 


204  The  Great  Lakes 

the  completion  of  the  new  ship  Pike.  During  July, 
General  Dearborn  was  recalled  from  his  command 
at  Fort  George  because  of  the  capture  by  the  British 
of  Lieutenant-Colonel  Boerstler  and  seven  hundred 
men,  and  during  this  same  month  Black  Rock  was 
captured  by  the  enemy  and  recaptured  by  the  Amer- 
icans, but  it  was  not  until  the  30th  that  an  important 
blow  was  struck  by  either  side.  On  this  day  the 
Americans  again  descended  upon  York,  destroyed 
eleven  transports,  burned  the  barracks,  and  captured 
a  considerable  quantity  of  supplies  and  ammunition. 
Both  the  Americans  and  the  British  were  now 
looking  for  a  decisive  naval  battle  between  Yeo  and 
Chauncey  upon  Lake  Ontario.  The  squadrons  were 
quite  evenly  matched  with  the  advantage,  if  any,  in 
favour  of  the  Americans.  Both  commanders  watched 
for  a  favourable  opportunity  to  attack,  but  not  until 
the  I  ith  of  August  was  a  gun  fired.  After  an  almost 
harmless  long-distance  cannonade  between  the  fleets, 
the  Julia  and  Growler,  two  of  Chauncey's  vessels, 
became  separated  from  the  main  squadron  and  were 
cut  off  and  captured  by  Yeo.  For  a  month,  the  two 
fleets  were  chasing  or  evading  each  other,  and  it 
was  not  until  the  nth  of  September  that  they  ap- 
proached close  enough  for  another  engagement,  which 
was  only  slight.  These  "chase-and-run  tactics"  con- 
tinued until  the  28th,  when  the  squadrons  came 
together  again  in  York  Bay.  In  the  action  that 
followed,  Yeo's  ships  were  badly  damaged  and  ran 


The  War  of  1812  and  After  205 

for  protection  into  Burlington  Bay.  This  victory, 
although  not  resulting  in  the  capture  of  the  British 
fleet,  completely  established  Chauncey's  supremacy 
and  for  the  remainder  of  the  season  Yeo  remained 
at  Kingston. 

For  some  months  past,  Captain  Oliver  Hazard 
Perry,  acting  under  Commodore  Chauncey,  had  been 
devoting  his  energies  to  the  creating  of  a  fleet  on 
Lake  Erie,  and  with  such  energy  that  on  the  mem- 
orable morning  of  September  loth,  when  from  the 
masthead  of  the  Lawrence  at  Put-in-Bay  was  seen 
the  approaching  squadron  of  Captain  Robert  Barclay, 
he  had  under  his  command  nine  vessels  carrying 
a  total  of  fifty-four  guns  and  five  hundred  and  thirty- 
two  men.  These  vessels  were  the  Lawrence,  Niagara, 
Caledonia,  Ariel,  Scorpion,  Somers,  Porcupine,  Tigress, 
and  the  Trippe.  Barclay's  fleet  was  composed  of 
the  Detroit,  Queen  Charlotte,  Lady  Prevost,  Hunter, 
Chippeway,  and  Little  Belt,  carrying  a  total  of  sixty- 
three  guns  and  four  hundred  and  forty  men.  It 
is  interesting  to  note,  according  to  Theodore  Roose- 
velt's Naval  War  of  18 12,  that  notwithstanding  the 
superior  nimiber  of  their  guns  the  British  ships  were 
capable  of  throwing  a  broadside  of  only  459  pounds 
as  against  936  pounds  from  the  American  squadron, 
a  fact  which  shows  the  overwhelming  superiority 
of  Perry's  fleet  and  incidentally  robs  his  victory  of 
some  of  its  glory. 

In    my    examination    of    the    many    and    various 


2o6  The  Great  Lakes 

accounts  of  the  naval  battle  of  Lake  Erie,  I  have  found 
that  the  most  complete  and  authentic  report  is  that 
of  Mr.  Roosevelt,  who  goes  with  minute  detail  into 
the  preparation,  comparative  strength,  and  handling 
of  the  two  squadrons,  and  inasmuch  as  this  battle 
of  Erie  is  one  of  the  most  thrilling  episodes  of  our 
Inland  Seas,  I  have  secured  the  very  kind  permission 
of  Mr.  Roosevelt  to  use  a  part  of  his  description  of 
the  actual  contest.  Soon  after  daylight,  on  Septem- 
ber loth.  Perry  got  under  way  and  advanced  toward 
the  enemy  in  battle  form. 

"As,  amid  light  and  rather  baffling  winds,  the  American 
squadron  approached  the  enemy"  [says  Roosevelt],  "Perry's 
straggling  line  formed  an  angle  of  about  fifteen  degrees  with 
the  more  compact  one  of  his  foes.  At  11.45,  the  Detroit  opened 
the  action  by  a  shot  from  her  long  24,  which  fell  short;  at 
11.50,  she  fired  a  second  which  went  crashing  through  the 
Lawrence,  and  was  replied  to  by  the  Scorpion's  long  32.  At 
11.55,  the  Lawrence,  having  shifted  her  port  bow-chaser,  opened 
with  both  the  long  12's,  and  at  meridian  began  with  her  car- 
ronades,  but  the  shot  from  the  latter  all  fell  short.  At  the 
same  time,  the  action  became  general  on  both  sides,  though 
the  rearmost  American  vessels  were  almost  beyond  the  range 
of  their  own  guns,  and  quite  out  of  range  of  the  guns  of  their 
antagonists.  Meanwhile,  the  Lawrence  was  already  suffering 
considerably  as  she  bore  down  on  the  enemy.  It  was  twenty 
minutes  before  she  succeeded  in  getting  within  good  carronade 
range,  and  during  that  time  the  action  at  the  head  of  the  line 
was  between  the  long  guns  of  the  Chippeway  and  Detroit,  throw- 
ing 123  pounds,  and  those  of  the  Scorpion,  Ariel,  and  Lawrence, 
throwing  104  pounds.    As  the  enemy's  fire  was  directed  almost 


r^ 


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ffi 


o 


The  War  of  1 812  and  After  207 

exclusively  at  the  Lawrence  she  suffered  a  great  deal.  The 
Caledonia,  Niagara,  and  Somers  were  meanwhile  engaging,  at 
long  range,  the  Hunter  and  Queen  Charlotte,  .  .  .  while 
from  a  distance  the  three  other  American  gun-vessels  engaged 
the  Prevost  and  Little  Belt.  By  12.20  the  Lawrence  had  worked 
down  to  close  quarters,  and  at  12.30  the  action  was  going  on 
with  great  fury  between  her  and  her  antagonists,  within  can- 
ister range.  The  raw  and  inexperienced  American  crews  com- 
mitted the  same  fault  the  British  so  often  fell  into  on  the  ocean 
and  overloaded  their  carronades.  In  consequence,  that  of 
the  Scorpion  upset  down  the  hatchway  in  the  middle  of  the 
action,  and  the  sides  of  the  Detroit  were  dotted  with  marks 
from  shot  that  did  not  penetrate.  One  of  the  Ariel's  long 
12's  also  burst.  Barclay  fought  the  Detroit  exceedingly  well, 
her  guns  being  most  excellently  aimed,  though  they  actually 
had  to  be  discharged  by  flashing  pistols  at  the  touchholes, 
so  deficient  was  the  ship's  equipment.  Meanwhile,  the  Cale- 
donia came  down  too,  but  the  Niagara  was  wretchedly  handled, 
Elliott  keeping  at  a  distance  which  prevented  the  use  either 
of  his  carronades  or  of  those  of  the  Queen  Charlotte,  his  an- 
tagonist; the  latter,  however,  suffered  greatly  from  the  long 
guns  of  the  opposing  schooners,  and  lost  her  gallant  comman- 
der. Captain  Finnis,  and  first  lieutenant,  Mr.  Stokes,  who 
were  killed  early  in  the  action;  her  next  in  command,  Pro- 
vincial Lieutenant  Irvine,  perceiving  that  he  could  do  no  good, 
passed  the  Hunter  and  joined  in  the  attack  on  the  Lawrence 
at  close  quarters.  The  Niagara,  the  most  efficient  and  best- 
manned  of  the  American  vessels,  was  thus  almost  kept  out 
of  the  action  by  her  captain's  misconduct.  At  the  end  of  the 
line  the  fight  went  on  at  long  range  between  the  Somers,  Tigress, 
Porcupine,  and  Trippe  on  one  side,  and  Little  Belt  and  Lady 
Prevost  on  the  other;  the  Lady  Prevost  making  a  very 
noble   fight,   although   her   12-pound  carronades   rendered  her 


2o8  The  Great  Lakes 

almost  helpless  against  the  long  guns  of  the  Americans.  She 
was  greatly  cut  up,  her  commander,  Lieutenant  Buchan,  was 
dangerously,  and  her  acting  first  lieutenant,  Mr.  Roulette, 
severely  wounded,  and  she  began  falling  gradually  to  leeward. 

"The  fighting  at  the  head  of  the  line  was  fierce  and  bloody 
to  an  extraordinary  degree.  The  Scorpion,  Ariel,  Lawrence, 
and  Caledonia,  all  of  them  handled  with  the  most  determined 
courage,  were  opposed  to  the  Chippeway,  Detroit,  Queen  Char- 
lotte, and  Hunter,  which  were  fought  to  the  full  as  bravely. 
At  such  close  quarters  the  two  sides  engaged  on  about  equal 
terms,  the  Americans  being  superior  in  weight  of  metal,  and 
inferior  in  number  of  men.  But  the  Lawrence  had  received 
such  damage  in  working  down  as  to  make  the  odds  against 
Perry.  On  each  side  almost  the  whole  fire  was  directed  at 
the  opposing  large  vessel  or  vessels;  in  consequence  the  Queen 
Charlotte  was  almost  disabled,  and  the  Detroit  was  frightfully 
shattered,  especially  by  the  raking  fire  of  the  gunboats,  her 
first  lieutenant,  Mr.  Garland,  being  mortally  wounded,  and 
Captain  Barclay  so  seriously  injured  that  he  was  obliged  to 
quit  the  deck,  leaving  his  ship  in  command  of  Lieutenant 
George  Inglis.  But  on  board  the  Lawrence  matters  had  gone 
even  worse,  the  combined  fire  of  her  adversaries  having  made 
the  grimmest  carnage  on  her  decks.  Of  the  103  men  who  were 
fit  for  duty  when  the  action  began,  83,  or  over  four  fifths,  were 
killed  or  wounded.  The  vessel  was  shallow,  and  the  ward- 
room, used  as  a  cockpit,  to  which  the  wounded  were  taken, 
was  mostly  above  water,  and  the  shot  came  through  it  con- 
tinually, killing  and  wounding  many  men  under  the  hands 
of  the  surgeon. 

"The  first  lieutenant,  Yarnall,  was  three  times  wounded, 
but  kept  to  the  deck  through  all;  the  only  other  lieutenant 
on  board,  Brooks,  of  the  marines,  was  mortally  wounded. 
Every  brace  and  bowline  was  shot  away,  and  the  brig  almost 


The  War  of  1812  and  After  209 

completely  dismantled;  her  hull  was  shattered  to  pieces,  many 
shot  going  completely  through  it,  and  the  guns  on  the  engaged 
side  were  by  degrees  all  dismounted.  Perry  kept  up  the  fight 
with  splendid  courage.  As  the  crew  fell  one  by  one,  the  com- 
modore called  down  through  the  skylight  for  one  of  the  surgeon's 
assistants;  and  this  call  was  repeated  and  obeyed  till  none 
were  left;  then  he  asked,  'Can  any  of  the  wounded  pull  a  rope?* 
and  three  or  four  of  them  crawled  up  on  deck  to  lend  a  feeble 
hand  in  placing  the  last  guns.  Perry  himself  fired  the  last 
effective  heavy  gun,  assisted  only  by  the  purser  and  chaplain. 
A  man  who  did  not  possess  his  indomitable  spirit  would  have 
then  struck.  Instead,  however.  Perry  determined  to  win  by 
new  methods,  and  remodelled  the  line  accordingly.  Mr.  Turner, 
in  the  Caledonia,  when  ordered  to  close,  had  put  his  helm  up, 
run  down  on  the  opposing  line,  and  engaged  at  very  short 
range,  though  the  brig  was  absolutely  without  quarters.  The 
Niagara  had  thus  become  next  in  line  astern  of  the  Lawrence, 
and  the  sloop  Trippe,  having  passed  the  three  schooners  ahead 
of  her,  was  next  ahead.  The  Niagara  now,  having  a  breeze, 
steered  ahead  for  the  head  of  Barclay's  line,  passing  over  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  to  windward  of  the  Lawrence,  on  her  port 
beam.  She  was  almost  uninjured,  having  so  far  taken  very 
little  part  in  the  combat,  and  to  her  Perry  shifted  his  flag. 
Leaping  into  a  rowboat,  with  his  brother  and  four  seamen, 
he  rowed  to  the  fresh  brig,  where  he  arrived  at  2.30,  and  at 
once  sent  Elliott  astern  to  hurry  up  the  three  schooners.  The 
Trippe  was  now  very  near  the  Caledonia.  The  Lawrence,  having 
but  fourteen  sound  men  left,  struck  her  colors,  but  could  not 
be  taken  possession  of  before  the  action  recommenced.  She 
drifted  astern,  the  Caledonia  passing  between  her  and  her 
foes.  At  2.45,  the  schooners  having  closed  up,  Perry,  in  his 
fresh  vessel,  bore  up  to  break  Barclay's  line. 

"The  British  ships  had  fought  themselves  to  a  standstill. 


2IO  The  Great  Lakes 

The  Lady  Prevost  was  crippled  and  sagged  to  leeward,  though 
ahead  of  the  others.  The  Detroit  and  Queen  Charlotte  were 
so  disabled  that  they  could  not  successfully  oppose  fresh  an- 
tagonists. There  could  thus  be  but  little  resistance  to  Perry, 
as  the  Niagara  stood  down,  and  broke  the  British  line,  firing 
her  port  guns  into  the  Chippeway,  Little  Belt,  and  Lady  Prevost, 
and  the  starboard  ones  into  the  Detroit,  Queen  Charlotte,  and 
Hunter,  raking  on  both  sides.  Too  disabled  to  tack,  the  Detroit 
and  Charlotte  tried  to  wear,  the  latter  running  up  to  leeward 
of  the  former;  and,  both  vessels  having  every  brace  and  almost 
every  stay  shot  away,  they  fell  foul.  The  Niagara  luffed  athwart 
their  bows,  within  half  pistol-shot,  keeping  up  a  terrific  dis- 
charge of  great  guns  and  musketry,  while  on  the  other  side 
the  British  vessels  were  raked  by  the  Caledonia  and  the  schooners 
so  closely  that  some  of  their  grape-shot,  passing  over  the  foe, 
rattled  through  Perry's  spars.  Nothing  further  could  be  done, 
and  Barclay's  flag  was  struck  at  3  p.m.  after  three  and  a  quarter 
hours*  most  gallant  fighting." 

In  this  conflict  off  Put-in-Bay,  the  American  loss 
was  twenty-seven  killed  and  ninety-six  wounded. 
Of  these,  twenty-two  were  killed  and  sixty-one 
wounded  aboard  the  Lawrence.  The  British  loss 
was  forty-one  killed  and  ninety-four  wounded,  the 
loss  falling  most  heavily  on  the  Detroit  and  Queen 
Charlotte. 

Immediately  after  the  battle,  Perry  wrote  his 
famous  dispatch  to  General  Harrison:  "We  have 
met  the  enemy  and  they  are  ours;  two  ships,  two 
brigs,  one  schooner,  and  one  sloop";  and  in  a  post- 
script  he    added,     "Send   us   some   soldiers   to   help 


The  War  of  1812  and  After  211 

take  care  of  the  prisoners,  who  are  more  numerous 
than  ourselves." 

It  is  interesting  to  note  what  became  of  the  vessels 
which  played  such  an  important  part  in  this  tragic 
drama  of  Lake  Erie.  The  Lawrence,  afterward  re- 
paired, was  sunk  in  Misery  Bay  for  preservation. 
Long  afterward  a  part  of  her  stem  was  raised  and 
kept  as  a  memorial.  For  years  the  Niagara  was 
a  training  ship  on  Lake  Erie,  and  was  then  sunk 
near  the  Lawrence.  The  Ariel,  Little  Belt,  Chippeway, 
and  Trippe  were  destroyed  by  the  British  at  Buffalo. 
The  Detroit  was  also  sunk  near  the  Lawrence,  but 
in  1835,  she  was  raised  and  rigged  by  a  Captain  Miles. 
She  was  afterwards  purchased  by  a  Niagara  man, 
and  as  a  spectacle  for  a  crowd  of  curious  people  was 
allowed  to  break  herself  to  pieces  on  the  rocks  above 
the  Falls.  The  Queen  Charlotte,  Lady  Prevost,  and 
the  Hunter  were  used  in  the  Lake  trade,  and  the 
Caledonia  became  the  General  Wayne.  Both  the  Scor- 
pion and  the  Tigress  were  recaptured  by  the  British 
on  Lake  Huron. 

The  effects  of  Perry's  victory  over  Barclay's  squad- 
ron were  immediate.  The  British  at  once  gave 
up  all  hope  of  retaining  their  possessions  on  the 
Upper  Lakes,  and  General  Proctor  began  the  evac- 
uation of  Forts  Detroit  and  Maiden.  With  all  the 
boats  that  he  could  get  into  his  possession  he  began 
a  precipitate  flight  up  the  river  Thames,  where  he 
was  joined  by  the   Indian  chief  Tecumseh  and   his 


212  The  Great  Lakes 

warriors.  Encouraged  by  this  reinforcement  he  deter- 
mined to  select  his  own  position  for  giving  battle 
to  the  Americans,  who  were  hurrying  across  country 
from  Amherstburg  under  the  command  of  General 
Harrison.  Meanwhile,  a  number  of  the  smaller  Ameri- 
can war  vessels  made  their  way  up  the  Thames  and 
Proctor  prepared  to  meet  them  with  his  own  armed 
boats.  Harrison's  force,  which  outnumbered  Proctor 
two  to  one,  came  up  to  the  enemy  close  to  the  river, 
and  the  fierce  charge  of  Colonel  Johnson  and  his 
Kentucky  horsemen  almost  immediately  broke  the 
enemy's  line.  After  a  desperate  struggle  the  regulars 
surrendered,  but  Tecumseh,  who  had  from  one  thou- 
sand to  two  thousand  warriors,  continued  to  fight 
until  he  fell  mortally  wounded,  when  his  braves  broke 
and  fied.  The  armed  boats  in  the  river  were  de- 
stroyed to  keep  them  from  falling  into  the  hands  of 
the  Americans.  Only  a  few  years  ago,  two  of  these 
were  discovered  and  raised.  An  accompanying  illus- 
tration shows  one  of  these  vessels  just  after  it  was 
brought  above  the  water,  with  a  heap  of  old  cannon 
balls  amidships. 

Perry's  victory  and  Harrison's  defeat  of  the  British 
virtually  decided  the  war  along  the  Lakes,  although, 
during  the  following  winter,  the  British  prepared 
to  make  one  more  tremendous  effort  to  regain  a  part 
of  the  supremacy  they  had  lost.  This  effort  was 
to  be  made  on  Lake  Ontario.  During  the  whole 
of  the  winter  of   1813-14,  both  Yeo  and  Chauncey 


^'^'VERs/TvV 


''^k/FORNlA 


I 


The  War  of  1812  and  After  213 

strained  every  resource  to  prepare  themselves  for 
this  final  conflict,  and  it  was  during  this  time  that 
the  largest  ships  of  war  that  ever  floated  on  the  Lakes 
were  built,  among  them  being  the  American  ship 
Superior,  to  carry  sixty-two  guns,  and  the  British 
ships  Prince  Regent,  fifty-eight,  and  the  Princess 
Charlotte,  forty-two.  The  two  fleets  were  pretty 
evenly  matched,  each  squadron  having  eight  ships, 
but  with  the  Americans  leading  in  tonnage,  number 
of  men,  and  guns.  Yeo,  however,  was  prepared  for 
battle  earlier  than  Chaimcey,  and  taking  advantage 
of  this  he  prepared  to  attack  Oswego,  which  was 
garrisoned  by  less  than  three  hundred  men  and  was 
in  a  wretched  state  of  defence.  On  the  3d  of  May 
he  set  sail,  having  on  board  his  squadron  a  detach- 
ment of  over  a  thousand  troops.  The  fire  of  the 
fort  was  drawn  on  the  fifth,  but  it  was  not  until 
the  following  day  that  the  battle  began  in  earnest, 
when  five  of  the  British  warships  began  a  terrific 
bombardment  under  cover  of  which  eight  hundred 
troops  and  two  hundred  seamen  were  landed.  The 
little  garrison  fought  with  desperate  valour  and  when 
they  were  finally  driven  from  their  position  the  British 
had  lost  ninety-five  men,  a  number  a  third  as  great 
as  the  American  force  opposed  to  them.  The  Ameri- 
cans lost  six  men  killed  and  thirty-eight  wounded, 
the  remainder  escaping  to  the  Falls. 

On  May   19th,    Yeo  transferred   his  operations  to 
Sacketts  Harbour,  where  he  began  a  strict  blockade, 


214  The  Great  Lakes 

much  to  the  discomfiture  of  Chauncey,  who  still 
lacked  important  material  for  the  completion  of 
the  Superior.  It  was  while  attempting  to  capture 
several  small  boats  with  a  part  of  this  material  that 
two  British  gunboats,  three  cutters,  and  a  gig,  carry- 
ing several  heavy  guns  and  one  hundred  and  eighty 
men,  started  up  Sandy  Creek  on  the  thirtieth,  and  ran 
into  an  ambush  laid  by  Major  Appling  and  one  hundred 
and  twenty  American  riflemen.  In  the  terrific  volleys 
that  followed,  the  British  suffered  heavily,  eighteen 
of  their  number  being  almost  immediately  killed 
and  fifty  wounded.  The  entire  force  was  captured 
with  a  loss  on  the  American  side  of  but  one  wounded. 
On  June  6th,  Commodore  Yeo  raised  his  blockade 
and  from  then  until  July  31st,  when  Chauncey  brought 
out  his  squadron,  nothing  of  importance  was  ac- 
complished with  the  exception  of  two  or  three  suc- 
cessful cutting-out  expeditions  on  the  part  of  the 
Americans.  Even  after  this  date,  until  the  close 
of  navigation,  the  two  fleets  acted  merely  in  the 
capacity  of  watch-dogs,  neither  daring  to  attack 
the  other.  During  the  greater  part  of  this  period, 
Yeo  was  penned  up  in  Kingston,  while  Chauncey, 
whose  superior  force  would  have  made  his  co-operation 
of  tremendous  value  to  the  land  forces  under  General 
Brown,  peremptorily  refused  this  assistance,  saying 
that  his  object  was  the  destruction  of  the  enemy's 
fleet  and  not  to  "become  a  subordinate  or  appendage 
of  the  army."     On  the  other  hand,  he  could  not  get 


The  War  of  1812  and  After  215 

Yeo  to  fight,  so  that  his  powerful  force  remained 
practically  useless. 

Meanwhile  General  Brown  undertook  his  con- 
templated invasion  of  Canada,  sending  Generals  Scott 
and  Ripley  to  the  attack  of  Fort  Erie,  which  soon 
surrendered.  A  few  days  later,  on  July  5th,  General 
Riall  with  a  force  of  nearly  2000  British  met  the  Amer- 
icans near  Chippewa,  and  one  of  the  fiercest  and 
most  important  battles  of  the  war  was  the  result. 
Notwithstanding  the  superior  numbers  of  the  enemy, 
the  victory  fell  to  the  Americans,  whose  loss  was 
61  killed  and  255  wounded  as  against  236  killed  and 
322  wounded  on  the  British  side.  It  was  at  this 
critical  moment,  when  a  successful  and  complete 
invasion  of  Canada  might  have  been  made,  that 
General  Brown  wrote  to  Chauncey  asking  for  his 
co-operation.  Soon  after  this.  General  Riall  was 
reinforced  by  800  men  under  Sir  George  Gordon 
Drummond,  and  on  the  25th  of  July,  General  Scott 
was  sent  against  them  with  a  force  of  1200  men. 

Scott  was  unaware  of  the  full  strength  of  the  enemy 
until  he  found  Riall  and  Drummond  drawn  up  to 
meet  him  at  Lundy's  Lane.  This  was  at  five  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon,  and  with  the  idea  of  impressing 
upon  the  British  that  the  entire  American  army 
was  at  his  back,  General  Scott  at  once  began  the 
attack.  The  struggle  was  one  of  intense  courage 
on  both  sides  and  continued  until  10.30  at  night, 
when  the  British  were  driven  from  the  field,   leaving 


2i6  The  Great  Lakes 

General   Riall   a   prisoner.      The   American   loss   had 
also  been  so  severe  that  they  retired  from  the  field, 
abandoning  a  captured  battery.     During  the  night, 
this  battery  was  again   manned   by  the  British  and 
a  bloody  fight  ensued  the  following  morning  before 
it  was  recaptured.     At  Lundy's  Lane,  the  Americans 
lost  171    killed   and    571    wounded;    the    British   84 
killed   and    559   wounded.     General   Scott   had   been 
severely  wounded  in  the  struggle,  and  General  Brown 
was  laid  up  with  injuries  at  Back  Rock,  so  that  the 
command  fell  upon  General  Ripley  who  at  once  made 
preparations  to   recross   into  the  American   frontier. 
Brown  sent   positive   orders  that   this   move   should 
not  be  made  and  that  General  Ripley  should  hold 
Fort  Erie.     On  August  2d,  General  Drummond,  who 
had  been   reinforced    by  over   1000  men,   laid  siege 
to  this  stronghold,  and  for  two  weeks  desultory  fighting 
occurred  around  it.     On  the  night  of  the   14th,   at 
twelve    o'clock,    a    terrific    assault   was   begun    upon 
the  works  and  continued  until  daylight.     The  British 
had  captured  one  of  the  bastions  and  it  was  while 
holding  this  position  that  a  fearful  explosion  occurred 
directly  under  their  feet,   killing  and  wounding  the 
greater   portion   of   them   and   striking   the   decisive 
blow  of  the  siege.     The  American  loss  was  17  killed 
and   56  wounded,   while  the  British  lost   221   killed 
and  174  wounded. 

For  several  weeks,  both  sides  continued  to  strengthen 
their   positions,    and    by   the   middle   of    September, 


o 
o 
in 


'or: 
C 

-t-> 

o 
III 

in 

o 


CO 


The  War  of  1812  and  After  217 

5000  Americans  under  Generals  Brown  and  Porter 
were  ready  for  an  attack  on  the  British.  On  the 
17th,  Riall  was  engaged  by  the  entire  American 
force  and  was  driven  from  the  position  he  had  taken, 
with  a  loss  of  about  500  in  killed  and  wounded. 
Meanwhile,  General  Izard's  division  was  hurrying 
to  the  frontier  and  with  his  arrival  the  American 
force  was  increased  to  8000.  Riall  and  Drummond 
in  the  face  of  these  overwhelming  odds  retreated 
to  Fort  George  and  Burlington  Heights,  and  on  Novem- 
ber 4th,  Fort  Erie  was  blown  up,  General  Izard  be- 
lieving that  it  would  be  of  no  further  use  to  the 
Americans.  Active  operations  along  the  frontier 
then  ceased  for  the  winter. 

During  this  breaking  of  British  power  along  the 
Niagara  frontier,  there  had  occurred  one  or  two 
interesting  events  on  the  Upper  Lakes.  Now  that 
the  British  had  lost  their  fleet  on  Erie,  and  that  they 
had  become  almost  fugitives  from  the  American 
forces,  those  that  remained  of  them  seemed  endowed 
with  almost  superhuman  courage  and  ability.  Cap- 
tain Sinclair  had  sailed  up  into  Lake  Huron  with 
the  Niagara,  Caledonia,  Ariel,  Scorpion,  and  Tigress, 
and  had  burnt  the  fort  and  barracks  of  St.  Joseph, 
when  the  first  of  these  exploits  occurred.  On  August 
4th,  Sinclair  had  made  an  unsuccessful  attack  on 
Fort  Michilimackinac  (Mackinac) ,  had  burned  a  block- 
house, and  then  departed  for  Lake  Erie,  leaving 
the  Scorpion  and  Tigress  on  Lake  Huron.     On  the 


2i8  The  Great  Lakes 

3d  of  September,  four  small  boats  filled  with  British 
made  an  attack  on  the  Tigress  under  cover  of  dark- 
ness, and  after  a  brief  hand-to-hand  struggle  captured 
her.  The  commander  of  the  Scorpion  had  no  know- 
ledge of  this  attack,  and  on  the  5th,  he  innocently 
ran  within  a  couple  of  miles  of  the  Tigress,  which 
was  still  flying  the  American  flag.  Early  the  following 
morning,  the  Tigress  ran  close  up  to  the  Scorpion, 
cleared  her  deck  with  a  volley  of  musketry,  and 
captured  her  without  resistance  being  made.  Mean- 
while on  the  night  of  August  12th,  a  daring  British 
expedition  in  small  boats  captured  the  armed  schooners 
Somers  and  Ohio,  with  another  armed  ship,  the  Por- 
cupine, lying  near.  In  this  exploit,  seventy  British 
seamen  in  small  boats  had  captured  two  well-armed 
vessels  carrying  ninety  men  and  with  a  strong  sister- 
ship  a  few  cable-lengths  away,  an  achievement  which 
has  few  rivals  in  naval  history. 

But  these  latter  events,  brilliant  though  they 
were,  were  of  but  slight  importance.  The  British 
were  defeated  and  broken  from  end  to  end  of  the 
Lakes,  and  peace  was  at  hand.  On  December  24, 
1 81 4,  fifteen  days  before  the  battle  of  New  Orleans, 
peace  was  declared  at  Ghent,  and  with  the  signing 
of  the  treaty  the  sanguinary  history  of  the  Lakes, 
a  story  that  had  covered  more  than  two  centuries 
of  ceaseless  war  and  bloodshed,  was  at  an  end.  From 
this  time  on,  their  history  was  to  be  one  of  coloniza- 
tion and  commerce. 


The  War  of  1812  and  After  219 

For  a  number  of  years  previous  to  the  War  of 
1 81 2,  there  had  been  a  growing  tendency  on  the 
part  of  the  people  of  the  East  to  emigrate  into  the 
West,  but  the  unsettled  conditions  of  the  whole  Lake 
region,  threatened  by  Indian  war  and  the  bloody 
feuds  of  rival  trading-companies,  held  the  bulk  of 
the  pioneers  along  Lake  Ontario.  Now  the  flood- 
gates burst  loose.  Thousands  of  settlers  hurried 
into  Ohio,  and  others  pushed  on  through  the  wilder- 
ness into  Michigan.  In  1818,  the  Walk-in-the-Water, 
the  first  steamer  to  float  upon  the  Upper  Lakes, 
was  launched  in  Lake  Erie,  and  began  making  trips 
from  Buffalo  to  Detroit,  charging  eighteen  dollars 
per  passenger  for  the  journey.  Other  vessels  en- 
gaged in  the  passenger  trade  and  emigrants  were 
enabled  to  travel  entirely  by  water.  By  1820,  Ohio 
possessed  a  population  of  over  half  a  million.  Nine- 
teen out  of  twenty  of  the  west-bound  pioneers  stopped 
somewhere  along  the  shores  of  Lake  Erie,  and  at 
this  date  Michigan's  population  was  less  than  nine 
thousand.  But  with  the  coming  of  other  steamers, 
not  only  Michigan,  but  Illinois  and  Wisconsin  began 
to  receive  a  part  of  the  westward-flowing  tide.  The 
Erie  Canal  had  been  opened  as  early  as  1825,  and 
the  rapidity  of  the  growth  of  commerce  on  the  Inland 
Seas  may  be  judged  by  the  fact  that  in  1836  more  than 
three  thousand  canal-boats  were  employed  upon  it,  a 
large  part  of  their  traffic  being  the  transportation  of 
emigrants   and   their  effects  to  the  larger  vessels  on 


220  The  Great  Lakes 

Lake  Erie.  During  this  year,  there  were  ninety  steam- 
boat arrivals  at  Detroit,  and  one  of  these  vessels, 
the  United  States,  carried  as  high  as  seven  hundred 
emigrants  on  a  single  trip.  From  that  day  to  this, 
the  ships  of  the  Great  Lakes  have  never  been  able 
to  more  than  keep  pace  with  the  demands  of  trade. 
In  1836,  vessel-men  earned  as  high  as  eighty  per  cent, 
on  the  cost  of  their  vessels.  To-day  they  are  still 
earning  thirty. 

Beginning  with  1839,  the  emigrant  travel  to  Chicago 
was  so  great  that  a  line  of  eight  vessels  engaged  in 
this  traffic  alone,  each  vessel  making  the  trip  once 
in  sixteen  days.  It  was  now  impossible  to  build 
ships  fast  enough  to  keep  pace  with  the  developing 
commerce.  During  the  ten  years  between  1830  and 
1840,  the  population  of  Michigan  increased  from 
31,000  to  212,000,  and  practically  the  whole  of  it  came 
by  lake.  In  1840,  Wisconsin's  population  was  less 
than  31,000;  ten  years  later,  it  was  305,000.  By 
1846,  the  value  of  the  commerce  of  the  Lakes  was 
already  enormous.  Its  value  for  that  year  is  estimated 
to  have  been  over  eighty  millions  of  dollars.  In 
1835,  the  American  Fur  Company  built  the  John 
Jacob  Astor,  the  first  large  ship  to  sail  Lake  Superior, 
and  the  trade  in  copper  began  soon  after.  With 
the  discovery  of  the  rich  mineral  deposits,  hundreds 
of  prospectors  began  flocking  into  the  North,  men 
with  capital  hurried  to  the  regions  of  the  red  metal, 
and,  in  the  race  after  wealth,  vessel-men  did  not  wait 


The  War  of  1 812  and  After  221 

to  build  ships  on  Superior  but  hauled  their  vessels 
bodily  across  the  mile  portage  at  Sault  Ste.  Marie. 
In  1855  was  built  the  Falls  Canal,  and  from  that 
date,  the  commerce  of  Superior  became  an  important 
factor  in  the  traffic  of  the  Lakes.  All  that  was  needed 
to  make  it  the  most  important  body  of  fresh  water 
on  the  globe  was  the  discovery  of  iron.  This  dis- 
covery, and  the  part  that  iron  has  played  in  the 
making  of  our  nation,  have  been  described  in  preceding 
pages. 


Map  of  the  Gnat    Lakes   Region 


INDEX 


Aborigines,  warlike,   of    the    early 

history  of  the  Lakes,  163 
Adams,  Mayor,  of  Buffalo,  127 
Aillon,  Father  Joseph  de  la  Roche 

d',  mission  formed  by,  168 
Algonquin,  a  tribe  of  Indians,  164 
Alpena,  the,  of  Lake  Michigan,  102 
Araerican  Fur  Company,  the,  220 
American   Shipbuilding   Company, 

the,  15,  16 
Argosy,  the  huge,  of  the  Lakes,  26 
Artel,  the  battle-ship,  217 
Assiniboines,  the,  of  Minnesota,  176 
Astor,  John  Jacob,  220 
Atlanta,  the  loss  of  the,  102 
Atlantic,    loss    of,    with    valuable 

cargo,  no 

B 

Bannockburn,  the  mystery  of  the, 

103 
Barre,  Governor  De  la,  of  Canada, 

177 
Beauharnois,  Governor,  of  Canada, 

1727,  180 
Beaver  Island,  88 
Belle  Isle,  a  great  pleasure  ground, 

85 
B.  F.  Jones,  the  cargo  of,  60 
"Bread  Basket  of  the  World,"  the 

future,  60 
Brock,  General,  the  death  of,  84 
Brule,     Stephen,     discovers     Lake 

Superior,  166 
Buffalo,  shipyards  at,   10 
BiuTiett,  Governor,  of  New  York, 

180 


Cabins  on  a  freighter,  138 
Calbick,  James  A. ,  President  of  the 
Lumber  Carriers'  Association,  51 


Caledonia,  the  capture  of,  198 
Canada,     the     fertile     regions     of 

western,  63 
Canadian  Niagara  Falls  Company, 

the,  133 
Canals,  the,  at  Sault  Ste.  Marie,  27 
Cargoes  of  the  Great  Lakes,  i 
Caron,  Joseph  Le,  discovers  Lake 

Ontario,  166 
"Carriers, "  the,  of  the  Great  Lakes, 

24 
Cayuga  Indians,  the,   165 
Cheapness  of  travel  on  the  Lakes, 

75 
Chicago,  shipyards  at,  10 
Chicora,  the  passenger  steamer,   42 
"City  of  the  Five  Great  Lakes," 

the,  48 
City  of  St.  Ignace,  the,  a  passenger 

steamer,  74 
Cleveland,  shipyards  at,  10 
ClifE  stamp  mill,  the,  32 
Coal,  immense  amount  consumed, 

27 
Cole,  Thomas  F.,  President  of  the 

Oliver  Mining  Company,  32 
Collisions,  danger  of,  94 
Commerce,  the,  on  the  Lakes,  11, 

49 
Construction  of  a  Lake  ship,  23 
Corduruis,  the  freighter,  100 
Coulby,    Harry,    President   of   the 

Pittsburg   Steamship   Company, 

12 
Cruise  of  a  Lonely  Heart,  The,  93 
Cuyler,  Lieutenant,  defeat  of,  187 


D 


Dacotah,  the  loss  of  the,  104 
Dakotas,  the  powerful  tribe  of  the, 

164 
Daumont,    Simon     Francis,    takes 

possession  of  the  Lakes,  175 
Davidson,  James,  mentioned,  40 


223 


224 


Index 


Dean  Richmond,  the  treasure  ship, 

io8 
Deluth,  Daniel,  a  fort  erected  by, 

1761,  176 
Denonville,  Marquis,  178 
Detroit,  shipyards    at,     10;     great 

industry  at,  15;  tonnage  passing, 

27;  the  defence  of,   188 
Detroit  Journal,  the,  42 
Detroit  River,  the,  2  7 
Detroit  Shipbuilding  Company,  the, 

Detroit  Tribune,  the,  42 
Development,  the,  of  the  region,  6 
Devil's  Hole,  the  massacre  at,  189 
Dining-room  on  a  freighter,  144 
Dividends  on  an  investment  in  a 

Lake  freighter,   61 
Douglas,  G.  L.,  14 
Duluth,  the  "highway"  to,  3;  the 

great  future  of,  123 


E 


Earle,   Commodore,   on  Lake  On- 
tario, 195 
Earling,  the  loading  of  the,  43 
Early  history  of  the  Lakes,  159  ff. 
Electrical  Development  Company, 

the,  133 
Elevators,  the  building  of,  63 
Elliott,  Commander  Jesse  D.,  197 
Elwood,  H.  C,  of  the  Chamber  of 

Commerce  in  Buffalo,   116 
English,  settlements  of  the  olden 

time  on  the  Lakes,  177;  traders, 

179 
Erie  Basin,  the,  131 
Erie   Canal,  transportation   on,  7; 

the   widening    of,    63;    the    new 

era  for,  132 
Escarpments,    the    worn,    of    the 

Lakes,  162 
Extent  of  the  ore  deposits,  36 


Five    Nations,    the    Indian    tribes 

known  as  the,  165 
Flagg,  a  cargo  of  copper  on  the,  66 
Flour,  amount  carried  on  the  Lakes, 

50 
Flying  Dutchman,  the,  of  the  Lakes, 

103 
Food,  the  various  kinds  of,  on  a 

freighter,  153 


Forests  of  Minnesota,  the,  53 
Fort  Niagara,  the  remains  of,   84 
Foxes,   the   extermination   of   the, 

165 
Freight,  amount  of,  on  the  Great 

Lakes,  25 
Freighters,    the    largest    fleet    of, 

iii ;  the  luxuriance  of  the,  20 
Fresh-water  seas,  iii 
Frontenac,  Fort,  built,   1673,  170; 

taken  by  English,  1758,  182 
"Frozen  Ship, "  the  mystery  of  the, 

III 
Fuel,  the  loading  of,  65 
Fur  trade,  the  increase  of  the,  194 


George  W.  Perkins,  the  record  of 

the,  45 
Georgian  Bay,  a  trip  past,  86 
Gilcher,  the  loss  of  the,  102 
Gilchrist,   J.    C,   the   head   of  the 
Gilchrist    Transportation    Com- 
pany, 13 
Glacial  Age,  the,  in  North  America, 

162 
Gladwin,  Major,  defends  Fort  De- 
troit, 186 
G.  P.  Griffin,  the  burning  of  the,  105 
"Grain  Age,"  the  beginning  of  the, 

63 
"Grand  Army,"  the,  of  the  Lakes, 

52 
Great  Lakes,  the  (see  Inland  Seas) 
Griffin,  the,  84;  the  romantic  loss 

of,  iii;  the  history  of  the,  1^71  ff. 
"Groves"  as  pleasure  resorts,  81 
"Guests'     quarters,"    the,     on     a 

freighter,  139 

H 

Harry  Berwind,  a  private  room  on 

the,  139 
Hatch-bag,  playing  of,  150 
Hazard,  Captain  Oliver,  205 
Hudson,  the  loss  of  the,  102 
Hull,     General,     invades    Canada, 

195;  cowardice  of,  196 
Huron,  Lake,  a  trip  up,  3 


I 


Ice  Age,  the  waning  of  the,  162 
"Ice  devils,"  the  damage  done  by, 
99 


Index 


225 


Indian  canoes,  fleets  of,  165 
Industrial  supremacy,  5 
Inland  Seas,  the,  commercial  life 
of,  iv;  the  leviathans  of,  3;  the 
spirit  of,  4 ;  normal  condition,  7 ; 
shipbuilding  on,  1 1 ;  the  wonders 
of,  12;  fortune  making  on,  18; 
cargoes  on,  26;  commerce  of, 
48 ;  death  of  the  lumber  fleets  of, 
52;  cheap  transportation  on,  62; 
transportation  of  copper  on, 
66;  passenger  traffic  on,  68;  sum- 
mer life,  68  ff. ;  Admiral  Dewey 
visits,  73 ;  marine  tragedies  of, 
77;  the  spring  rush  on,  89;  dan- 
gers of  navigation,  91;  danger 
of  ice,  96;  mysteries  of,  103; 
struggle  for  supremacy  of,  117; 
greatest  ship  on  the,  137;  early 
history  of,  159  ff.;  missions  es- 
tablished on,  169;  change  of 
masters,  175;  England  supreme, 
183;  peace  on,  193;  naval  battle 
of  Lake  Erie,  206 
"Inner     life,"     the,     of     a     great 

freighter,  137 
Iron,  the  prominence  of,  28 
Iron  ore,  the  transportation  of,  8 
Ironsides,  the  steamer,  104 
Iroquois,  the,  of  Lake  Ontario,  165 


Jackson,  Captain  James,  the  hero- 
ism of,  95 

Jesuits,  the  missions  established 
by  the,  169 

K 

Kent,  the  wreck  of  the,  109 
King  Strang,  the  Mormon,  88 


Lackawanna  Iron  and  Steel  Com- 
pany, the,  125 
Lady  Elgin,  the  sinking  of  the,  104 
Lake  Carriers'  Association,  the,  46 
Lakeside  inns,  life  at  the,  82 
Laurentian  River,  the,  161 
Lawrence ,  the  attack  on  the,  207 
Lexington,    lost    with    a    cargo    of 

whisky,  no 
Life  of  the  Great  Lakes,  iii 
Little  Venice,  mentioned,  85 
Livingston,  William,  President    of 


the    Lake   Carriers'  Association, 

40,  46 
Lorain,  shipyards  at,  10 
Loyalty,  the,  of  the  Indians,  183 
Lumber  Carriers'   Association,  the, 

5° 
Lumber  industry,  the  extinction  of, 

52 


M 


Mackinaw  Island,  78 

Maid  of  the  Mist,  the,  83 

Manitou  Island,  a  wreck  near,  no 

Manitowoc,   shipyards  at,   10 

Mapleson  Opera  Company,  the,  42 

Mason,  F.  Howard,  126 

Mataafa,  the  steel  ship,  105 

Matchedash  Bay,  166 

McKenzie,  Captain,  peculiar  situa- 
tion of,  100 

Mesaba,  the,  as  a  wilderness,  34 

Mesaba  range,  the  richness  of  the, 
40 

Mess-room,  the,  on  a  freighter,  1 54 

Mexican  mahogany  woodwork,   73 

Miami  Indians,  the,  197 

Michilimackinac,  the  fort  at,  176; 
the  destruction  of  the  garrison 
at,  185 

Mines,  the  working  of,  37 

Mitchell,  Captain  John,  14 

Mohawks,  the,  165 

Montreal,  the  fall  of,  1760,  183 


N 


Nashtia,  the  disappearance  of,  102 
Neuters,  a  tribe  of  Indians,  165 
New  York  Steel  Company,  the,  125 
Niagara    Falls,    money    expended 

above,  9 
Niagara  Falls  Hydraulic  Power  and 

Manufacturing  Company,  133 
Niagara  Falls  Power  Company,  the, 

133      ^ 
Nicolet,  Jean,  167 
North  Tonawanda,  the  growth  of, 

130 


O 


"Observation   room,"     the,    of    a 

freighter,  142 
Ohio  River,  the  country  north  of,  8 
Ojibwas,  the,  164 
Oliver   Mining   Company,  the,  32 


226 


Index 


Oneida  Indians,  the,  165 
Onondaga  Indians,  the,   165 
Ontario,  the  battle-ship,  192 
Ontario  Power  Company,  the,  134 
Ore  beds,  the,  of  Minnesota,  4 
Ore  docks,  the,  at  Duluth,  43 
Origin,  the,  of  the  Great  Lakes,  161 

Ostrich,  the  resting  place  of  the,  no 
Oswego,  a  trading  post  at,  180 
Ottawas,  the  tribe  of  the,  1 64 
Owners,  the  ship,  i 


Palatinate,  the  War  of  the,  179 
Passenger  steamers,  the,  69 
Passenger  traffic,  the,  68  ff. 
Pay-rolls,  the,  of  Buffalo,  126 
Perry,  Commodore,  the  victory  of, 

211 
Pessano,  Antonio  C,  15 
Pewabic,  the,  in  Thunder  Bay,  106; 

the  finding  of,   109 
Phoenix  mine,  an  accident  in  the, 

.32 
Pike,   Brigadier-General,   201 
Pilot-house,  the,  on  a  Lake  steamer, 

149 
Pine  wood,  the  total  amount  from 

Michigan,  57 
"Pittsburg  of  the  North,"  the,  124. 

(See  Duluth) 
Pittsburg  Steamship  Company,  the, 

12 
"Plate  department,"  the,  of  a  ship- 
yard, 22 
Point  Pelee,  the  battle  of,  187 
Pontiac,  the  Indian  chief,  85 
Port  Arthur,  the  shipping  of,  62 
Porter,  Moses,  193 
Pottawatomies,  a  tribe  of  Indians, 

164 
Purre,  Don  Eugenio,  departure  of, 

192 
Put-in-Bay,    historical    events    at, 

84;  the  great  naval  battle  of,  210 


Q 


Queen  Anne's  War,  180 

Queen  of  the  West,  the  loss  of  the, 

99  #. 
Queenston,  the  attack  on,  198 
Queenston  Heights,  the  battle  of, 

84 


Richardson,  W.  C,  40 
Riveting  machines,  the,  24 
Roberts,  Captain,  at  St.  Joseph,  195 
Rocky  River,  the  change  of  posi- 
tion of,  191 
Romans  of  the  Wilderness,  the,  180 
Roosevelt,  President  Theodore,  ac- 
count by,  206 
Ruggles'    Grove,    overlooking    the 
Lake,  79 

S 

Sacketts   Harbour,   operations   at, 

213 
Sacs,  a  tribe  of  Indians,  165 
Sailors  on  the  Lakes,  i 
Sandusky,    Fort,    the    capture    of, 

184 
Sault  Ste.  Marie  canals,  the,  27 
Savages,  the  first,  near  the  Lakes, 

164 
Schantz,  A.  A.,  General  Manager, 

Scorpion,  the  battle-ship,  218 
Sellwood,  Captain  Joseph,  29 
Seneca  Indians,  the,  165 
Seven  Years'  War,  the  beginning  of 

the,  181 
Shattuck's  Grove,  an   inexpensive 

resort,  79 
Sheadle,  J.  H.,  14 
Ship-builders,  the,  of  the  Lakes,  v 
Ships,  the,  of  the  Great  Lakes,  i 
Shuffle-board,  the  playing  of,  150 
Signals  in  code  used  on  the  Lakes, 

Silver -ware  on  a  freighter,  144 
Sinclair,  Captain,  on  Lake  Hturon, 

217 
Sioux  Indians,  the,  165 
Snyder,  W.  P.,  30 
Social  equality  on  the  Lakes,  the, 

70 
"Soo,"  records  of  tonnage  at  the,  27 
St.  Clair,  Lake,  a  summer  at,  83 
Steam  shovels,  the  work  of,  38 
Steel  Corporation,  the,  122 
St.  Mary's  River,  the,  87 
"Stripping,"  the  work  of,  39 
Suez  Canal,  the,  in  1908,  6 
Summer    life   on    the   Lakes,   the, 

68  #. 
Superior,  the  steamer,  98 
Superior,  Lake,  commerce  on,   10 
Supremacy,  the  struggle  for,  1 1 4 


Index 


227 


Taxes  in  Michigan,  the  lapse  of,  58 

Te  Deum  Laudamus,  the  singing  of, 
171 

Thames,  the  battle  of  the,  85 

Thomas  F.  Cole,  the  steamer,  19 

"Thousand-mile  highway,"  the,  3, 
13 

Toledo,  shipyards  at,  10 

Toledo  Shipbuilding  Company,  the, 
18 

Tomlinson,  G.  Ashley,  14;  an  opin- 
ion of,  36 

Tonawandas,  the  twin,  46 

Tower,  Charlemagne,  Ambassador 
to  Germany,  1884,  34 

Tragedies,  the,  of  the  Lakes,  95 

"Twin  Cities,"  the,  54 

"  Two  Lost  Tows,"  the,  102 


U 


United  States,  the  emigrant  ship, 

220 
Upper  Peninsula,  the,  87 
Utes,  the,  of  White  River,  41 
Utrecht,  the  Treaty  of,  17 13,  180 

V 

Van  Rensselaer,  Colonel,  199 


Vermilion  ranges,  the,  29 
Vessels    of    the    Lakes,  the    con- 
struction of,  10  ^. 

W 

Walk-in-the-Water,  the  first  steam- 
boat of  the  upper  Lakes,  219 

Wallace,  James  C,  of  Cleveland,  16 

War  of  1812,  the,  194  ff- 

W.  B.  Kerr,  capacity  ofthe,  61 

West  Superior,  shipyards  at,  10 

Western  Reserve,  the,  98 

Westinghouse,  George,  an  opinion 
by, 133 

Westmoreland,  loss  of  the,  no 

W.  F.  Sauber,  the,  96;  the  sinking 
of,  97 

Whisky,  a  valuable  cargo,  no 

White  River  Utes,  the,  41 

Wickwire  Steel  Company,  the,  125 

William  H.  Stevens,  the  treasure 
ship,  108 

Wolvin,  A.  B.,  40 


Yale,  the  steamer,  96 
Yellow  pine  of  Louisiana,  the,  58 
Yeo,  Sir  James  Lucas,  203 
Young  Sion,   the  disappearance  of 
the,  109 


American   Waterways 
The  Romance  of  the  Colorado  River 

The  Story  of  its  Discovery  in  1 540,  with  an  account  of  the  Later 
Explorations,  and  with  Special  Reference  to  the  Voyages  of  Powell 
through  the  Line  of  the  Great  Canyons. 

By  Frederick  S.  Dellenbaugh 

Member  of  the  United  States  Colorado  River  Expediiion  of  1871  and  1872 

435  pages,  with  200  Illustratioas,  and  Froatisptece  in  Color.     $3.50  net 

"  His  scientific  treuning,  his  long  experience  in  this  region,  and  his  eye 
for  natural  scenery  enable  him  to  make  this  account  of  the  Colorado  River 
most  graphic  and  interesting.  No  other  book  equally  good  can  be  writ- 
ten for  many  yeais  to  come — not  imtil  our  knowledge  of  the  river  is 
greatly  enlarged." — The  Boston  Herald. 

"  Mr.  Dellenbaugh  writes  with  enthusiasm  auid  baJeuice  about  his 
chief,  and  of  the  canyon  with  a  fascination  that  make  him  dismclined  to 
leave  it,  and  brmgs  him  thirty  years  later  to  its  description  with  undimin- 
ished interest. — New  York  Tribune. 


The  Ohio  River 

A  COURSE  OF  EMPIRE 
By  Archer  B.  Hulbert 

Associate  Professor  of  American  History,  Marietta  College, 
Author  of  "  Historic  Highways  of  America,"  etc. 

390  pages,  with  100  Illustrations  and  a  Map.     $3.50  net 

An  interestmg  description  from  a  fresh  point  of  view  of  the  interna- 
tional struggle  which  ended  with  the  English  conquest  of  the  Ohio  Basin, 
and  includes  many  interesting  details  of  the  pioneer  movement  on  the  Ohio. 
The  most  widely  read  students  of  the  Ohio  Valley  will  find  a  unique  and 
unexpected  interest  in  Mr.  Hulbert's  chapters  deeding  with  the  Ohio  River 
in  the  Revolution,  the  rise  of  the  cities  of  Pittsburg,  Cincinnati,  and  Louis- 
ville, the  fighting  Virginians,  the  old-time  methods  of  navigation,  etc. 

"A  wonderfully  comprehensive  and  entirely  fascinating  book." — 
Chicago  Inter-Ocean. 


American   Waterways 


Narragansett   Bay 

Its  Historic  and  Romantic  Associations  and  Picturesque  Setting 
By  Edgar  Mayhew  Bacon 

Author  of  "  The  Hudson  River,"  "  Chronicles  of  Tarrytown,"  etc. 

340  pages,  with  50  Drawings  by  the  Author,  and  with  Numerous 
Photographs  and  a  Map.     $3.50  net 

Impressed  by  the  important  and  singular  part  played  by  the  settlers 
of  Narragansett  in  the  development  of  American  ideas  and  ideals,  and 
strongly  attracted  by  the  romantic  tales  that  are  inwoven  with  the  warp 
of  history,  as  well  as  by  the  incomparable  setting  the  great  bay  affords  for 
such  a  subject,  the  author  offers  this  result  of  his  labor  as  a  contribution 
to  the  story  of  great  American  Waterways,  with  the  hope  that  his  readers 
may  be  imbued  with  somewhat  of  his  own  enthusiasm. 

"  An  attractive  description  of  the  picturesque  part  of  Rhode  Island. 
Mr.  Bacon  dwells  on  the  natural  beauties,  the  legendary  and  historical  asso- 
ciations, rather  than  the  present  appearance  of  the  shores." — N.  y.  Sun. 


The  Great  Lakes 

By  James  Oliver  Curwood 
With  about  60  Illustrations,     Probable  price  $3.50  net 

This  profusely  illustrated  book,  as  entertaining  as  it  is  informing,  has 
the  twofold  advantage  of  being  written  by  a  man  who  knows  the  Lakes 
and  their  shores  as  well  as  what  has  been  written  about  them.  The  gen- 
eral reader  will  enjoy  the  romance  attaching  to  the  past  history  of  the 
Lakes  and  not  less  the  romance  of  the  present — the  story  of  the  great 
commercial  fleets  that  plough  our  inland  seas,  created  to  transport  the 
fruits  of  the  earth  and  the  metals  that  are  dug  from  the  bowels  of  the 
earth.  To  the  business  man  who  has  interests  in  or  about  the  Lakes,  or 
to  the  prospective  investor  in  Great  Lakes  enterprises,  the  book  will  be 
found  suggestive.  Comparatively  little  has  been  written  of  these  fresh- 
water seas,  and  many  of  his  readers  will  be  amazed  at  the  wonderful 
story  which  this  volume  tells. 


Jimerican  W aterways 


The  St.  Lawrence  River 

Historical — Legendary — Picturesque 
By  George  Waldo  Browne 

Author  of  "  Japan — the  Place  and  the  People,"  "  Paradise  of  the  Pacific,"  etc, 

385  pages,  with  100  lllustratioas  and  a  Map.     $3.50  net 

While  the  St.  Lawrence  River  has  been  the  scene  of  many  important 
events  connected  with  the  discovery  and  development  of  a  large  portion 
of  North  America,  no  attempt  has  heretofore  been  made  to  collect  and 
embody  in  one  volume  a  complete  and  comprehensive  nanative  of  this  great 
waterway.  This  is  not  denying  that  considerable  has  been  written  relating 
to  it,  but  the  various  offerings  have  been  scattered  through  many  volumes, 
and  most  of  these  have  become  inaccessible  to  the  general  reader. 

This  work  presents  in  a  consecutive  narrative  the  most  important 
historic  incidents  connected  with  the  river,  combined  with  descriptions  of 
some  of  its  most  picturesque  scenery  and  delightful  excursions  into  its 
legendary  lore.  In  selecting  the  hundred  illustrations  care  has  been  taken 
to  give  as  wide  a  scope  as  possible  to  the  views  belonging  to  the  river. 


The  Niagara  River 

By  Archer  Butler  Hulberl 

Professor  of  American  History,  Marietta  College ;  author  of  "  The  Ohio  River," 
"Historic  Highways  of  America,"  etc. 

350  pages,  with  70  Illustrations  and  Maps,     $3.50  net 

Professor  Hulbert  tells  all  that  is  best  worth  recording  of  the  history 
of  the  river  which  gives  the  book  its  title,  and  of  its  commercial  present 
Euid  its  great  commercial  future.  An  immense  amount  of  carefully  ordered 
information  is  here  brought  together  into  a  most  entertaming  and  informing 
book.  No  mention  of  this  volume  ceui  be  quite  adequate  that  fails  to  take 
into  account  the  extraordinary  chapter  which  is  given  to  chronicling  the 
mad  achievements  of  that  company  of  dare-devil  bipeds  of  both  sexes  who 
for  decades  have  been  sweepmg  over  the  FeJls  in  beirrels  and  other 
receptacles,  or  who  have  gone  dancing  their  dizzy  way  on  ropes  or  wires 
stretched  from  shore  to  shore  above  the  boilmg,  leaping  water  beneath. 


yj  merican     W  aterways 


The  Hudson  River 

FROM  OCEAN  TO  SOURCE 

Historical  —  Legendary  —  Picturesque 

By  Edgar  Mayhew  Bacon 

Author  of  "  Chronicles  of  Tarrytown,"  "  Narragansett  Bay,"  etc. 

600  Pages,  with  100  Illustrations,  including  a  Sectional  Map  of  tlie  Hudson 
Fiver.     S3S0  net 

"  The  value  of  this  handsome  quarto  does  not  depend  solely  on 
the  attractiveness  with  which  Mr.  Bacon  has  invested  the  whole  subject, 
it  is  a  kind  of  footnote  to  the  more  conventional  histories,  because  it 
throws  light  upon  the  life  and  habits  of  the  earliest  settlers.  It  is  a  study 
of  Dutch  civilization  in  the  New  World,  severe  enough  in  intentions  to 
be  accurate,  but  easy  enough  in  temper  to  make  a  great  deal  of  humor, 
and  to  comment  upon  those  chetfacteristic  customs  and  habits  which,  while 
they  escape  the  attention  of  the  formal  historian,  are  full  of  significance." 

Outlook. 


The  Connecticut  River 

AND  THE 

Valley  of  the  Connecticut 

THREE  HUNDRED  AND  FIFTY  MILES  FROM  MOUNTAIN  TO  SEA 

Historical  and  Descriptive 

By  Edwin  Munroe  Bacon 

Author  of  "  Walks  and  Rides  in  the  Country  Round  About  Boston,"  etc. 

500  Pages,  witli  100  Illustrations  and  a  Map.     $3,50  net 

From  ocean  to  source  every  mile  of  the  Connecticut  is  crowded  with 
reminders  of  the  early  explorers,  of  the  Indian  wars,  of  the  struggle  of  the 
Colonies,  and  of  the  quaint,  peaceful  village  existence  of  the  early  days  of 
the  Republic.  Beginning  with  the  Dutch  discovery,  Mr.  Bacon  traces 
the  interesting  movements  and  events  which  are  associated  with  this  chief 
river  of  New  Englemd. 


American    W aterways 


The  Columbia  River 

Its  History — Its  Myths — Its  Scenery — Its  Commerce 
By  William  Denison  Lyman 

Professor  of  History  in  Whitman  College,  Walla  Walla,  Washington 

Fully  Illu$trated.     Probable  price,  $3.50  net 

This  b  the  first  effort  to  present  a  book  distinctively  on  the  Columbia 
River.  It  is  the  intention  of  the  author  to  give  some  special  prominence 
to  Nelson  and  the  magnificent  lake  district  by  which  it  is  surrounded. 
As  the  joint  possession  of  the  United  States  and  British  Columbia,  and 
as  the  grandest  scenic  river  of  the  continent,  the  Columbia  is  worthy  of 
speciaJ  attention. 

In  Preparation  t 

Each  will  be  fully  illustrated  and  will  probably  be  published  at  $3.50  net 

1. — Inland  Waterways 

By  Herbert  Quick 

2. — ^The  Mississippi  River 

By  Julius  Chambers 

3. — ^The  Story  of  the  Chesapeake 

By  Ruthella  Mory  Bibbins 

4. — Lake  George  and  Lake  Champlsun 

By  W.  Max  Reid 

Author  of  "  The  Mohawk  Valley,"  "  The  Story  of  Old  Fort  Johnson,"  etc. 


FOURTEEN  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 


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